Often when I talk with a single person about the marriage question, I run smack into a wall of mental obstacles I call objections.
Let me give you some context. I am a freelance artist and have been for many years. Naturally, when I first started out after grad school, I paid attention to good advice on how to sell. This wasn’t my main focus (I never was too commercial), but I had to learn something about sales in order to make any sort of living as an artist.
As I’ve said before, my dad grew up pretty poor. After he graduated college, he went into business. He’s a great communicator, my dad. So when I needed to start securing clients for my artwork and teaching services, he shared with me a few keys to making a sale that I’ve always remembered. One of the most useful keys my dad taught me was the concept of objections. Objections, as he explained it, are barriers to agreement. When sitting down with a client of any sort, even a potential one, I learned that I had to listen very carefully to detect any objections that may be making it difficult to move forward.
His advice did help me with clients. It has helped me in other areas too, like teaching, working with people in recovery—even dating and discerning marriage. Listening carefully to discover and deal with objections has helped me wherever coming to a mutual agreement with someone is a challenge—or where the decision-making process seems to stall.
When it comes to the marriage question, I notice a lot of the same objections coming up repeatedly in conversation (I’ve heard some pretty unique ones too). The good news is, while these objections may, at times, be valid, that doesn’t mean they can’t be resolved. They must be. In order for anyone to move forward with a decision, they first need to have their objections heard, understood and resolved. If you think about it, every person you’ve ever met who has made a real commitment—to marriage, or anything else—has had to discover and resolve any number of objections before they could arrive at that state.
Some people have objections holding them back from even approaching the marriage question. They come from bad experiences and bad information; wounds, fears and lies; beliefs about one’s self, God or other people that may be totally false. They sometimes have diabolical origins, although they may be based on perfectly valid arguments.
That’s where self-knowledge comes in. Unless I know myself enough to see which ideas and beliefs are causing my objections, it’s nearly impossible for me to change course. Instead, I keep marching along, doing and saying the same things I always did—even if it isn’t working. I may be too proud to admit that some of my ideas need to change before I can change anything else. I may be self-satisfied, even though I am on the wrong track. I lack humility. Without the humility that comes from self-knowledge, its impossible to see myself—or anything else in the world—accurately.
St. Theresa of Avila stressed this in her spiritual work, Interior Castle:
“Self knowledge is so important that, even if you were raised right up to the heavens, I should like you never to relax your cultivation of it; so long as we are on this earth, nothing matters more to us than humility.”
To do what the title of this website suggests, you’ll probably need to look carefully at the ideas and beliefs that you currently take for granted about yourself, God, and others. You’ll need to know what your objections are, so you can find solutions for them. I will discuss practical methods for doing this in the coming articles.
For now, you might want to start by doing what the old guys in the 12-Step-Club call “The Set Aside Prayer.” It goes something like this:
“God, please help me set aside everything I think I know about myself, about You, and about recovery.”
Obviously, the wording can be tweaked to fit your specific case. You can plug-in the things you feel perplexed or hopeless about, or specific objections you suspect are at play. Try saying:
“God, please help me set aside everything I think I know about_____”
(…men…women…dating…love…attraction…relationships…sex…marriage…)
You get the idea.
This simple prayer can prepare the ground of your mind to be open to grace. At least it can help you learn something new about an aspect of life that is really important to you. You don’t have to drop your ideas at this point. You can keep them as long as you want. Yet, what this prayer can signify and effect for you is the willingness to let God set your ideas aside, just enough, so that new information can be of use. With a mind shut tight, it’s impossible to think creatively, or to actually find a solution to our problems.
Personally, I experienced something remarkable with the Set Aside Prayer early on in my own journey. Back in 2006, I was a new grad student in my little dorm room in Philadelphia. I had been clean and sober less than a year. I was thousands of miles away from my family and friends, and I knew I was at a crossroads. I had made a lot of progress in recovery, and had prayed to God at times. Which was good. But I was loath to make any further commitment than that. I did not consciously consider myself a Christian. Yet, I was either going to make a giant step forward in my faith, or else slide backward, perhaps back to my old ways. I didn’t want that to happen. I said the Set Aside Prayer with all my heart, and then kept going with my duties and assignments. Within days, I found myself in a radically different place: kneeling alone in my dorm room again, this time asking Jesus to be my Lord, Savior and Master—something I never imagined I’d be doing!
That was just a beginning of a beginning for me. There were many different links in the chain of events both before and after that moment that led to me to the faith I have today. Yet, looking back on it now, I believe the Set Aside Prayer played a part. God indeed enabled me to set aside my ideas just enough to make a tiny, yet radical step forward in my conversion. There would be more profound steps forward in the months and years to come, yet each step was precipitated by the simplest, most practical effort to let God get in between me and my objections.
I will address specific objections and how one might resolve them in articles to come. For now, try the Set Aside Prayer. Apply it to your own unique case, and pray it honestly. You may soon find, through God’s mercy, real answers to the obstacles that have previously kept you stuck where you are.
Originally published: September 21st, 2020, by Michael Shelby Suberlak.
Grow Up and Marry! 