Wk10 – Simon and the Savior

Wk10 – Simon and the Savior

In the last chapter of the book Drawing Heaven into Your Marriage, by Dr Goddard, the author retells the story from Luke chapter 7 in the Bible. Simon, a pharisee, invited Jesus to dinner with him. While at dinner a woman with a bad reputation came in uninvited and began to wash the Saviors feet with her tears, weeping for her many sins and undoubtedly hopeful for consolation and forgiveness.

Simon not only judged the woman as unworthy to be in their presence, he judged his guest for tolerating it. 

My husband is a recovering addict. Eighteen of our twenty years of marriage have been overshadowed with addict behaviors, lies, gas-lighting, along with other struggles that came because of his addiction such as financial burdens and social shame. Though he has been 2 years clean of his addiction, and though our relationship is better than it’s ever been before, though he is taking on adult responsibilities with a new vigor that I’ve never seen, I still find myself at a loss sometimes. 

I know what kind of things he’s done. I know how far my husband has fallen. It’s ugly. It’s painful. It isn’t  for worldly glory that I object to his touch at times, but it is with awareness for how filthy he has been. He’s making a change, and I love it! But how can he ever make up to me the lost years? How can he ever compensate me for standing by him as he took our family through this darkness?

I want to be like my Savior. As I read this week’s assignment I recognized that one way to be like the Him is to unconditionally love someone who can not repay you. Christ won’t stop loving me, He won’t even change how much or how well He loves me. Elder Ronald A Rasband said, “There is no choice, sin, or mistake that you or anyone else can make that will change His love for you or for them.” I’m so deeply grateful that my Savior doesn’t ask me to pay back what I owe Him, because I couldn’t. It’s beyond me like jumping to the moon with a trampoline is beyond me.

My husband isn’t able to change our history and he isn’t able to compensate me for the years of loss. As I reflect on what I’ve learned, I realize I don’t want him to anymore. It was part of my lesson and a dangerous path to self-realization for the both of us. Not everyone will be able to save their relationships from the ugliness of addiction. In fact, I recognize that my husband still has agency and may some day return to it. But it doesn’t hold me captive anymore. I can love without expectation better than I could before, and if that was the cost of being like my Messiah, then the cost was not too high.

As Christ said in Luke 7:42 “When they had nothing to pay, (I) frankly forgave them both.” I have nothing to pay, my husband has nothing to pay, no one can pay. That was the point of needing a Savior in the first place. Christ sought to understand the woman who wept on His feet, He also sought to understand the pharisee. I will continue to seek understanding rather than compensation from my husband and all those whom I love.

Art by Kelley McMorris