Love Keeps No Record

Over the years, serving couples in ministry has been an area my husband and I have felt led to pursue. It has given us the opportunity to walk alongside couples through difficult seasons while also growing in our own understanding of marriage. This year, we have been able to do that in another way through Re|engage. Before serving as small group leaders, we went through the program ourselves, and it was such a blessing to our marriage. We had conversations we had never had before, looked back over more than 28 years of marriage, and had the opportunity to see and celebrate God's faithfulness throughout our story.

We also had the opportunity to look honestly at the years when God was not at the center of our marriage and to see how different our marriage became when we surrendered that part of our lives to Him. It has been a privilege to share some of that story with other couples, not because we have somehow figured marriage out, but because we have experienced the goodness of God and know that the kind of love we are called to give one another is only possible when Jesus is at the center.

Last week, one of the passages we studied was 1 Corinthians 13.

I have read these words so many times.

“Love is patient, love is kind…”

We had this passage read at our wedding more than 28 years ago, more as sage advice for how we should love one another than as an expression of a faith we were actively living out. At the time, neither of us really understood how impossible this kind of love would be apart from Jesus at the center of our lives. We knew the words. We wanted to live them. But we didn't yet understand how deeply our own brokenness would get in the way.

As I read through the familiar passage, I realized I was doing something I have probably done many times before. I found myself moving quickly through the familiar phrases, almost skimming over words I already knew by heart.

Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy or boast. It is not arrogant or rude.

And then the end of verse 5 seemed to jump off the page:

“It keeps no record of wrongs.”

I paused.

No record of wrongs. Okay. Got it.

Then I read verse 6:

“It does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.”

Of course I wouldn't rejoice in wrongdoing. That one seemed easy enough.

But this time, I couldn't quite move past it. And then the most vivid picture came to mind.

Imagine a large brick wall. On one side of the wall is my husband, standing in a posture of humility and surrender. On the other side is the brightest light. And there I am, walking along carrying a large brick, ready to add it to the wall that was casting a shadow over my husband.

In an instant, this picture conveyed to me some of the ways I have carried mistakes my husband has made over the years. Not constantly. Not intentionally. And certainly not because I am looking for reasons to criticize him. I love my husband deeply, and that is not the story of our marriage.

But there have been times when an old mistake became a story, a frustration became a joke, or something he had already moved past found its way back into conversation.

How many times have I shared a story about one of those mistakes with someone else and had a good chuckle? How many times have I retold something he did wrong because it was frustrating or simply made for a good story?

How many times have I taken a mistake that was already forgiven and carried it back into the light of day? Laying down bricks in a wall that grace had already torn down.

Some of those mistakes, the bricks I had been carrying, were small and seemingly harmless. They were silly mistakes that became stories I could tell, some funny and some that, looking back, may not have honored him as well as I should have. The kind of story that gets a laugh, but at whose expense?

Other bricks have been heavier.

There have been times when my husband made a mistake, and I shared it with a friend or family member. And if I'm honest, these were not times when I was humbly seeking wise counsel, an important step in accountability and discipleship. These were times when sharing his mistake made me feel justified. If I could tell someone else what he had done, perhaps they would understand why I had responded the way I did. Perhaps they would see that I was right.

I began to see the subtle way that I had participated in what Paul was describing as keeping a record of wrongs and rejoicing in wrongdoing. Not because I wanted my husband to do wrong or because I was overtly celebrating his failures, but because there were moments when his mistake gave me something to point to. Something that made me feel justified. Something that made my side of the story a little easier to defend.

What if rejoicing in wrongdoing sometimes looks like finding satisfaction in having someone else's failure to point to? A little spark of pleasure that comes from feeling justified because we have evidence that someone else got it wrong? An ‘I told you so’ moment.

That was a hard thing to see in myself.

I began to wonder how many times those bricks had created distance where there could have been grace. How many times had my words brought an old mistake back into the present? How many times had I taken something Jesus had already covered with grace and allowed it to have a place in the present when it no longer needed one?

This gave me a deeper understanding of what it means to keep a record of wrongs and rejoice in wrongdoing. Suddenly, the wall made sense.

The light was there. Jesus was present. My husband was standing in surrender. And yet I was carrying a brick toward the wall.

After 28 years of marriage, I am grateful for the testimony God has given us, for the ways He has redeemed our brokenness, and for the opportunity to share His faithfulness with other couples. But I am also grateful that He showed me something about my own heart that I might have missed if I had simply checked these familiar verses off my list.

Love is a way of living that requires me to surrender my own brokenness to Jesus, again and again.

So when I think about that wall now, I see a different picture. My husband and I are standing together, hand in hand, with no wall in sight. The light of Christ is shining over both of us, and there is freedom in knowing that neither of us has to be defined by the mistakes we have made.

And the next time I find myself tempted to pick up a brick, I pray I will remember that picture and choose to lay it down at the feet of Jesus.