Like many other men, I like to build things, fix things, tinker with things, make things better (insert Tim Allen grunting sounds here!). I suppose it’s part of our male-nature such that when there’s a problem, we men feel compelled to fix it. In my long career as a software developer, there’s seldom a problem that cannot be fixed in one way or another, even if that means throwing all the code out the window and starting from scratch. In fact, sometimes that’s the best solution: take the lessons learned and start over from Line 1. Same with writing: you can always Shift-Delete that entire chapter (or manuscript!) and start over from scratch.

But in life, it’s not that simple — nor easy or painless. We usually can’t just click “New Life” and start fresh. Our baggage sticks with us, even if it’s only just inside. That means our life — our heart, mind, and soul — needs to be fixed; we can’t just start over and pretend that the bad stuff never happened.

For a long time, my wife and I have had conflict and tension in our marriage that we can’t seem to find any real resolution to. We’ve tried many different things to try to fix it, but the tension is still there. Earlier this afternoon when I was praying about everything, I heard God gently speaking to me about the situation and our marriage, but this time was different. This time, I felt Him clearly telling me that He doesn’t want me to try to fix it; maybe He hasn’t all this time and I just haven’t been listening. In fact, I think He wants me to stop  “doing” and focus on “being” and to simply trust Him. Listen to Him. Obey Him. He wants me to simply wait on Him and (gasp! anything but this!) be patient.

As I thought on His words for awhile, I came to the conclusion that He’s probably right — okay, He’s 10000000% right. (He IS God, after all!) Perhaps a solution or even a resolution is not what He’s after in all this (or at least not at this time). Maybe — just maybe, He wants my obedience rather than my results. Maybe there are other lessons that He’s teaching that I need to learn first.

Like Phil and all he went through at Big Idea, maybe this conflict is really about me and my wife (and us) learning some lessons that cannot be learned in any other way — deep, hard lessons that involve both our persons at the lowest, deepest levels. In His great providence, our love and commitment to one another has remained strong, even through these deep hurts and upheavals. Yes, there are terribly hard questions that have been asked and left unanswered, yet would those questions have been asked under any other circumstances? Not likely. Would many of the great works of art, books, or plays/movies have ever been written under any other circumstances that didn’t involve tremendous pain, tension, or conflict? Definitely not.

In the Christian walk, there are times of pruning from our Gardener. That’s what He does: a clip here and a snip there, and sometimes even a saw is laid against one of our wayward branches. All pruning is for our ultimate benefit, our ultimate good, and He knows what He’s doing. To the tree, pruning is never pleasant — it’s downright painful and seems cruel and heartless. How the tree must despise the gardener at times! But God is our Divine Gardener, and He knows what He’s making of us and what’s best for us — even when we don’t.

Especially when we don’t.

So what’s the Gardener up to in this time of trial and pruning? In looking at myself and my own heart, selfishness in one form or another has always been there deep inside, no matter how selfless, helpful, and giving I may happen to be. My objects of selfishness have changed over the years, from toys to cars to money to hobbies to free-time to control to you-name-it. The thing is, I know that I tend towards selfishness and that it’s not good, so I purposely do things to counter it, but that selfishness is still there lurking around the corner.

Now, I’m not only speaking of the selfishness that we typically think of when we hear/use the word, such as greed or materialism or lack of sharing. When we think of the word “selfish” we tend to think of a child refusing to share their toys with others, a miser like Scrooge who refuses to give a penny to someone in need, or Gordon Gekko pronouncing “Greed is good! Greed is right!” But that’s too basic and rudimentary.

There’s a deep selfishness in each of us that runs to our very core that began with Adam and Eve that makes us want to put ourselves, our desires, and our will ahead of anything and everything. When it came to their choice of whether to eat the forbidden-fruit or not, it was their self-ish-ness — their decision to but their own “self” and their will over God and His — that at their core drove them to disobey Him. They wanted their “eyes to be opened” so they could “be like God” and put themselves first above all others (including God Himself).

When it comes to marriage — ALL marriages — there’s inherent conflict because there are two self-ish people who desire their own way and will which usually comes at the expense of the other person or the marriage itself. Marriage was the first human institution designed — and blessed — by God back in the Garden of Eden and can bring both the greatest of joys in life or the worst of pains, a paradise or a prison. And what determines each comes down to the degree of self-ish-ness of the couple in that marriage.

On a spiritual and practical level, marriage is a perfectly polished self-ish-ness mirror; it forces us to look at ourselves, particularly as we are seen through the eyes of our spouses. In fact, most people don’t really realize how self-ish they really are until after they get married or have children, when they’re no longer able to put themselves above everyone else. Marriage and parenting forces people to step off their own pedestal and put someone above themselves. Marriage only works when both people are putting the other ahead of themselves — when both are practicing self-less-ness rather than our built-in self-ish-ness.

God wants to remake, remold, and reshape us in His image, but our inherent self-ish-ness resists Him at every step of the way. So what’s He to do in order to teach us about real patience, true self-less-ness, and genuine sacrificial love? Just offhand, He allows (or even puts) us into positions that we cannot easily get out of, sometimes in which we cannot “do” much of anything but learn to wait, trust, hope, and love even when it hurts — especially when it terribly hurts.

When God wants us to learn how to trust Him, He allows us to be put into situations in which we have no other choice BUT to trust Him.

When God wants us to learn patience, He allows us to be put into situations where being patient and waiting on Him is all we can do. He often makes us wait and wait and wait until it’s absurd. And then wait some more.

When God wants us to learn to stop trying to control things, He allows us to be put into situations in which we have zero control over much of anything. In those times of helplessness and being out of control, we can’t even control what we think about!

When God wants us to learn to be less selfish (and less self-ish!) and hold things more loosely, He takes them from our hands or waits for us to let them go before He can give us what really matters.