Closing The Distance | Cornerstone Church | Pastor Linn Winters

Lisa's marriage and my marriage is amazing. Men, when you were single, everything you dreamed your marriage was going to be, that's my marriage. Ladies, when when you were playing house and just dreaming what your home and your marriage is gonna please switch, that's that's what our marriage is like.

And I know you're thinking to yourself, well, of course it is. You're a pastor and she's a pastor's wife, so of course your marriage is like amazing and easy and wonderful. Are you kidding me? You you realize Lisa and I are born of the same cloth you are, the same brokenness

of the children of Adam is in us, and you put two sinners and a house together and say good luck, it it's a challenge. And I'm just telling you, every single struggle that you have had, we have had to face too within our marriage and the thing I wanna give you some hope on today is it's possible.

It's possible to have that remarkable, unbelievable, loving marriage that you always hoped would be there. You just have to do things differently than your friends are doing it.

You may have to do it differently than your parents did. You're going to have to look at culture and what culture defines and says marriage and go, look, that's not right. That's a that's a broken view of what marriage is. And I can tell you that the only reason that Lisa and I are where we are is because we took what God said in scripture about how a man and a woman were to be together in marriage seriously,

and especially those passages that we didn't like and the ones that were uncomfortable and the ones we said, I don't know if that'll ever work, and we did those things

and it's what's brought us to the place that we're at right now. So here's what I did. I had every I gave one of these hopefully to every single person in the room. If you did not get one, do me a favor, raise your hand real quick. You're gonna want one. You'll understand in a moment.

So do we know what this is? Chinese handcuffs. So I'm seven years old when my dad introduces me to Chinese handcuffs probably because the the the heart of every father is to torture his son and, so he gives them to me and he says, hey, Lynn, stick your fingers in And I did and then of course, I'm immediately stuck

and and and I can't get my fingers out. And then my dad says, okay, Lynn, the way to get your fingers out is stick your fingers in further. I'm like, I, you know, I I was naive enough right to do this, no. No. That that's got to be exactly wrong. And my dad says, you ready?

It actually is the way that you free yourself. You you place your fingers on the end, you push in, it opens up, and then you're able to slide your fingers out. The very thing that seemed intuitively

wrong to do is the right thing to do. Here's why I gave these to you, because I guarantee you over the next four weeks as we discuss what scripture says about marriage, you're gonna go, that's wrong. There's no way that works. That's too hard.

And here's what I'm gonna ask you to do for thirty days. I'm gonna ask you to suspend doubt for thirty days. For thirty days to just simply say, if scripture said this is what a husband does, I'm gonna do that. If scripture says this is what a wife does, I'm gonna do that, and just see what God does

within your marriage. So here's what I'm asking you to do, would you take this,

put it somewhere you're gonna see it every day for the next thirty days, put it at your sink where you get ready in the morning, put it on the dashboard of your car where you drive, put it somewhere that every day you're gonna see it and you're gonna be reminded to say, hey, you know what, For thirty days, I'm going to do the thing that seems wrong

intuitively, it just it just doesn't even make sense that it would work, but I'm going to do what scripture says a husband and a wife is to do in marriage and see what God would do with my marriage.

Today, we're just going to talk about this idea, how is it that people who were so in love when they got married fall out of love? How does that happen?

And we've all seen it. Right? We've all seen the couple that are just like head over heels for each other. Matter of fact, you went to him because you had some concerns and you said, I mean, have you noticed? Have you noticed that she's kind of loud? And he said, oh I love that about her, she tells me what's on her mind,

and even her faults became benefits to him because he was so in love, but now it's ten years later and they did and you go, what's going on? You guys are getting divorced and they go, yeah, we we fell out of love.

How does that happen? How do you fall out of love with a person you were so deeply and profoundly? Were you walking along one day, you happened to be looking up at a bird flying and you didn't see the hole? You fell out of love? How does, and here's the answer, nobody falls out of love. We make

bad decision after bad decision after bad decision that leads us out of love and we're just going to expose that to her and say, hey, what is it that we did that took us from loving each other to now we can't even see the person we fell in love with? And here's the good news, here's what you need to hear.

If you're sitting here today and you've already gone and seen the lawyer, it's reversible. It's restorable. Hey, if you're here and you say, hey, you know Lynn, we're not there yet, but I can feel the drift. Here's what you need to know, it's avoidable. You can do something about it. You can

take away the things that you're doing that are taking you in the wrong direction and you begin to see that person you fell in love with again. Here's what I want to say too, this is really a relationship series. So if you're hearing you're single,

this is for you a, because you're going to use it someday probably when you get married, but here's the deal, some of us are sitting in this room today and you haven't talked to your parents in years. How did that relationship get so fractured? You've had a friend. You thought they were a friend for life, and now

now there's a level of animosity. There's a there's a level of struggle. You want nothing to do with them and they want nothing to do. How did that happen? And we're going to dig that out today and hopefully today is going to be something that helps us be wonderfully wildly successful

in our marriages and in our relationships. Okay. I'm going to ask Britt and TJ to come back out because they're gonna help us, walk this through.

Okay. So here's the disclaimer. When I came up with these little stories that I'm about to tell, I did not know that TJ and Britt were gonna be, my models for this, so you can decide if they really apply or not. Okay? That's that's up to you. How did we fall in love? How did that happen? So there was this moment,

when t j came home late. Now, that's bad enough because he didn't call, but here's what you don't know, is that, Britt had decided that she was gonna cook his favorite dinner and she didn't have the groceries in the house, so she actually had to go shopping. Then with loving care, she made the dinner for t j.

He doesn't show up for two hours. She sits at the table watching her loving dinner that was going to be this wonderful connecting moment and who knows what else, get cold. And in that moment she decided this is an offense that's big enough, it's important enough, it needs to be memorialized. I'm not going to forget

what TJ did. Here's the answer. TJ was actually hanging with a friend and he bought a new Xbox and TJ went over to test it out. That's what you do with a friend and and now it was two hours later, he gets home and Britt begins to give him the fourth degree. Where were you? I cooked you this dinner.

How come you didn't at least call? And TJ responded the way any man would respond, I am a man fully growed. I married a wife, I didn't marry a second mother, and if I want to stay out two extra hours, that's up to me. And now he's offended that he's treating him like a child. He memorializes it.

TJ comes home and Brit's hoping to have a conversation with him. Her day had a whole bunch of struggles, whole bunch of things that went on and her heart is, hey, I I'd like to share that with my husband. I'd I'd like to to

connect with him about what could this is what's gonna fill my heart and t j comes home from a day at working and and he's like, I'm tired. And so as he walks in the room, Britt says, hey, can can we talk? And t j says, and then walks off and plays video games.

Later that night, TJ realizes there's a little tension going on in the home. So he goes to Britt and he says, hey.

He's thinking, you know, we'll know, we'll we'll make everything okay again. And so he says to Britt, you wanna?

And Britt goes, oh, okay. So you were too tired to talk, but you're not too tired to I think I'm tired. And in that moment, TJ feels rejected. He's like, hey, I was trying to connect, I was trying to kinda, know, make what wasn't good better and so and now you're pushing me away.

They're out to dinner together. A little gal comes walking by, God has clearly blessed her and so as she walks by, TJ's eyes are fixed.

Britt goes, hey, And then TJ goes, no, I was just looking at the edge of the menu.

Besides, I I was just window shopping, I'm not buying anything. And Brit in her heart says, do you understand how that makes me feel? How insecure it makes me in our relationship?

They're out with a couple other couples and one of the lie wives there happens to mention something their husband's not good at. Britt says, hey, that's nothing. And now she goes through three of t j's flaws, just sharing them publicly to these other couples. He's like, how disrespectful can you be

that you that you would just like expose me like that in front of our friends?

Britt wishes that TJ was more active in leading their home spiritually. She wishes that he would pray with their kids at night before they went to bed, then on Sundays, he would be the one that initiated and said, hey, our family's going to church this Sunday.

But this Sunday, like every Sunday before that, it's Britt getting the kids ready for church and taking the church by ourselves while t j stays home and watches football.

Britt comes home from shopping. She's got she's got bags all lining her arms. TJ says, what did you do? And she said, it's okay because I saved money. And to t j, those don't look like shopping bags, they look like grenades blowing up their finances.

He's like, hey, you understand how tight we are. You you understand how hard I've been working to get us to a place where we're stable.

And here's what happens. You and I, you and I begin to take our offenses, and we begin to memorialize them, and we begin to build fences, and pretty soon those fences are so full, we can't even see the person we fell in love with anymore. And Britt's back here, TJ, where are you? How come we don't go to Benihana's anymore?

And you get what happened. We in that moment, we did exactly what we can for because guys here's the thing, look, when you and I are offended, what we do next is huge

in regards to the health of our marriage, in regards to the health of any relation, and if we decide in that moment, hey, we're gonna keep track, we're gonna take that thing and we're gonna memorialize, it's gonna be one more thing, there'll come the moment when the fence will be full

and you won't be able to see the person you fell in love with in the first place, and then we'll say something like, yeah, we fell out of love. No, you didn't. You built a fence. Hey, let's thank these guys. I

wish I could tell you how many times I've been in pastoral counseling where a couple comes to me and says, Lynn, our marriage our marriage is like in super trouble and would you meet with us? And and one of the things that I'll do is I'll say to like the wife, hey, what is it he could do? What is it that he could change

that that you seeing that would give you hope? That you seeing that you would go, I get it, he's serious about repairing this thing. And can I tell you what I hear more often than not? Nothing. Nothing. Why? Because he and she have allowed the fence to become so filled, right, so so blocking, so so obscuring

the person that they fell in love with that there's no longer any energy. There's no longer any hope that this can get better. And I'm just telling you, building fences, memorializing

the disappointment and the hurts that the people in our lives give us. And guys, here's the deal. You put two sinners in the same room, we're gonna hurt each other. The question is, what do I do with that? Matter of fact, grab your bibles real quick. Go with me to first Corinthians.

If you're not familiar, if you go to the back of your bible, work to the left, you're going to find this book of first Corinthians. First Corinthians chapter 13, we call this the love chapter in the bible. Matter of fact, if you've ever been to a wedding, the pastor read this.

I don't know why pastors read this chapter at weddings because no one's listening. The bride is all worried, can people see me sweating? The groom is thinking about the honeymoon night. The crowd is all watching the flower girl who's not dropping flowers. No one's listening. We should have said it before

and we surely should have said it after, but here's first Corinthians as it goes through this is how love behaves and look what it says in verse five.

It, speaking of love, does not dishonor others. It is not self seeking. In other words, it's not selfish. It's not easily angered. Are you ready? It keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not build fences. Love does not memorialize the disappointments and the hurts that the other person caused to us because

every plank I put up, every every offense that I go, okay, that's one more, you realize moves my heart one step further from the person I love. It closes my heart down just that much more.

The most destructive thing you can do in your marriage, the most destructive thing you can do between you and your parents or you and your friend is begin to memorialize the wrongs they've done to you. So the question becomes, is it possible to fix it? How would somebody who fell out of love

fall back into love? How would you restore a relationship that looks like this? When you and I are offended, you and I have three choices on how to respond.

Three choices to go, okay, there's a moment, I didn't like the moment, I'm frustrated, I'm hurt in the moment. There's three ways in which you and I can choose to respond. The first way is this, I can just say, hey, you know what, I'm

not going make a big deal about that. I'm just going to forget it. It's going to be I'm going to let it be a one off. That's just the way my my spouse is and and I'm not gonna let that be something that I put as a barrier between us and them. Matter of fact, grab your bibles and go with me to first Peter.

And if you're not familiar, first Peter is all the way at the back of your bible, so go to the back, start in the book of Revelation, but don't stop there because it's really scary. Now as a matter of fact, in January, we're gonna do a whole series about end times

and so we're gonna unpack Revelation together. So but first Peter chapter four

verse eight. Here's what it says, above all, love each other deeply because love covers a multitude of sins. Now it's unfortunate in this particular verse that it translates the word there, hamartiyah, as sins. All through the scripture, in all sorts of places, that word does mean sin because hamartia simply means falling short. And

so there's a whole bunch of places that says, hey, God said this is my standard, and you and I fell short of God's standard. We sinned in that moment. He said love one another, and we were unloving. We fell short. That was sinful. But in this particular passage,

it's not talking about, hey, my spouse sinned against me, it's saying, hey, my my spouse fell short of my expectations. My spouse fell short of what I wish they would have been like, right? And if I love them, love covers a whole bunch of falling short. You may not know this. My wife Lisa, my wife Lisa is a water thief.

In our bathroom, my sink is here and then if you take four steps you get to my wife's sink. It's right here. Our water is in the closet. It's three steps from Lisa's sink to get to our water supply. So I've got my water. I've got my water there for taking my pills, you know, in the morning, all my vitamins, all that stuff.

I can't tell you how many times I've gone, I get all my vitamins out, I throw them into my mouth.

No water. Lisa stole my water. Now think about it. It took her four steps to steal my water. If she had gone three steps the other, it went closer. She could have gotten into the water supply. She's a water thief.

And at some point you just gotta go, that's just my wife. You say, Lynn, is that the worst thing No, that's not the worst thing Lisa does, it's the worst thing I'm gonna tell you about. But

you get, you get right, that there are things that you just go, hey, that's my spouse. And and I'm I'm I'm not I'm not gonna make that thing that's disappointing to me or I wish was a little I'm not gonna make that an offense. I'm not gonna just go, well, yeah, I mean, now I'm stuck with a water thief.

And you know what helps me? When I start thinking of all the wonderful things Lisa is. Lisa's the best pastor's wife I have ever met. Lisa's a truth teller and believe me, I need a truth teller in my life and Lisa's my best friend. And when I start thinking of the wonder of my wife,

it's really easy to overlook her being a water thief. Okay? And guys, there's just gonna be, there should be moments where you just have to say, hey, that's just how God built my spouse.

Maybe your spouse is an introvert and you're like, you know, I keep trying to get us to go out and do social things and my spouse is always dragging their feet. They just they just don't want to do that very much and you have to go, that's just who my spouse is.

I'm not gonna let that be an offending thing. I'm not gonna let that be something that breaches, I'm just gonna accept my spouse for who they are. Maybe you're totally intuitive and you're like, I can make a decision about something with about 40% of the information, but my spouse

my spouse is always lingering. My spouse has to have like a 100% of the information before they can decide anything and there's moments when that's frustrating, you're like, I've already I already know the right answer and now you're waiting

and you've got to decide him, am I gonna let that be something that comes between us because we we live, we are different in how we view life and operate or I'm I'm just gonna accept it. That's my spouse. That's how God created them and it's okay because I see the wonder of everything else that they are.

And then the other thing about forgetting is there's days when your spouse just has a bad day. Man, they haven't eaten in hours or they're tired or it was rough and now they're a little bit short when they talk to you and you just got to go, that's not who they normally are

and I'm not going to make a big deal about that because I know they've had a heart. I'm just gonna love covers. You ready? Love covers a multitude of falling short and so it's possible that in that moment, what you got to do is say, hey, you know, I'd like to be frustrated about this. I'd I'd like to

make this a thing but I just choose not to. I I just choose to see the wonder of who I'm married to and accept the fact that, hey, they're different than me and it's okay because of all the other incredible, incredible things they are to me. So that's one thing you and I can do with our disappointments and offenses.

Here's the second thing. It may be a real offense, it may be a real moment in which they just lived poorly, they said things they never should have said, they wounded our heart, they behaved in ways that just really, really caused us to be wounded in the moment. So the second thing that you and I can choose to do

is forgive. Can I just promise you, if you're going to have a successful marriage, you're going to have to learn how to forgive, because I promise you, I promise you, there's going to be moments that your spouse is going to do things that hurt you

and what you do, am I going to memorialize that, am I going to make that one more mark or am I going to move toward forgiveness? You hear about be ready for this? You hear about people all the time saying, hey, we're divorcing because we have irreconcilable differences.

You realize they didn't have any more differences than you and I. The difference is they never reconciled any of the differences. They never reconciled any of the pain. Am I going to choose in a moment like this to forgive? Matter of fact, grab your bibles again, go with me to Ephesians,

go to the back of your bible, work to the left if you're not familiar. Ephesians,

Ephesians chapter four

to verse 32. Here's what it says, you ready? Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other. How do I show kindness and compassion? By forgiving. Forgiving one another each just as in Christ, God forgave you. Forgive each other the way that God forgave you. Here's two things to note about how God forgave us.

First off, God initiated the forgiveness. Think about it. He was the injured party. He had no responsibility in the brokenness, in the sin. Right? He If if by all means, he should have said, hey, you're the offender, you're the one that did this, you should come to me and instead he sent his son toward us. He initiated

the process of forgiveness for us just as God did, that's how you do forgiveness. Every relationship you ready? Every relationship needs a hero and the hero is the one who steps forward and says, hey, let's work on forgiving this

even if they feel like they're completely innocent. Matter of fact, here's some passages of scripture. Matthew chapter five, here's what it says. Matthew chapter five says, therefore, if you're offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you.

To put that in modern terms would be, if you're sitting in church and as you sit in church, you remember, hey, you know what? I've hurt somebody. I did something that wounded somebody. It says, you ready?

Leave your gift in front of the altar. Get up out of church and go to make this right now. Don't do that right now because we would know. But but you get what he's saying? Hey, if you remember, just get up, don't waste your time, don't do any get up and go.

First, go and be reconciled to them, then come off for your gift. You realize what God is saying? If I know that I've wounded my spouse, he says, don't come to church and raise your hands and act all worshipful. You go make it right with your spouse first, then you'll be ready to raise your hands and sing the songs.

That's how important it is that you and I who've hurt somebody initiate moving toward forgiveness, but watch this verse.

If your brother or sister sins, in other words, now someone sinned against you, you're the innocent party, which we always are. Right? If you're the innocent party, go and point out their fault. Go say, hey, you know what, when you said that it wounded me. Hey, when you behaved that way,

can I just tell you how much that hurt my heart?

I was out the other day and I was actually at a funeral and we were talking about a friend of mine and, he's like 60 years old. He married a 21 year old.

So we're at the funeral, you know, we're all just sitting around talking and we were talking about our friend who was 61 and married a 21 year old and and I said, you know, that's my plan. Lisa dies, I'm gonna go find me a 21 year old. And then I realized,

see I was joking right, I was just being silly in the moment, remember I used to be a youth pastor. What do you do when you know you hurt somebody's heart? You run toward them, you initiate going. What do you do when someone's hurt you? You run toward them.

You work toward forgiveness. And what you say is, hey, I I I just can't afford to have this between us. And so when there's a wound, when there's a hurt, I'm I'm not gonna sit back passively. I'm not gonna sit back and wait for something to happen or wait for the offending party to admit that they were wrong,

I'm going to go toward forgiveness.

Can I tell you the one reason maybe forgiveness isn't happening in your relationship is because when the other person tries to initiate forgiveness, we make it really hard on them? See, sometimes sometimes they come and they say, hey, you know, I'm I'm sorry I did that, and then we wanted to review all their past offenses.

You realized in 1972, you did that too.

How hard is it to ask forgiveness if the person you're asking forgiveness from is gonna burn your nose in it? And guys, just want I'm just gonna ask you to be gracious. When someone has the courage to come and say, hey, I was

take it for what it is. See, we we wanna go, you know what? I'm not sure. I'm not sure you feel bad enough yet. I I I I'm I'm not sure you understand how deeply you so you're asking forgiveness, but you only understand 50% of how you offended. You don't understand a 100% of how you offended me.

And guys, I'm just telling you that if we do that to you, if we make it hard for someone, they're gonna stop apologizing. They're they're gonna stop coming and you're right, they probably only understand 50% and maybe a year from now they'll understand better but you're gonna push away forgiveness?

Imagine if God did that to us. Hey, no, I'm not gonna forgive you for your sins because I don't think you understand how bad you were. Hey, you came and asked me for, but let me review all the sins you've done against me before I forgive you for this sin.

Work toward forgiveness. Refuse. Refuse for that board to stay up on your fence and even if you're ready, even if the person asking forgiveness, their even if their admission is incomplete, just like ours is with God, Be willing to forgive because you say, I just refuse to have that in our lives. And then the final one is,

oh, let me say this about forgiveness real quick. Forgiveness is not saying what they did is okay, that is not what forgiveness is. If it was okay, then it doesn't require forgiveness, right? Forgiveness is simply this, if you walk in front of the car, I won't speed up.

That's forgiveness. I'm not going to, right, in your birthday cake this year, I'm not going to fill it with Ex Lax. That's forgiveness, right? I'm not going to look or seek to penalize you or to inflict equal pain for what you did for me, right? I'm simply going to call it paid,

but I'm not going to forget and it doesn't mean I'm going to trust you, it just means I'm not going to inflict pain, right? Final one, final one, You choose to fix.

See, what you say in that moment is, hey, yeah, I'm gonna forgive that, but here's the deal. I don't wanna do that again over and over and over again for the next forty years. I do not wanna do that. So I I want us to fix this. I want us to come up and say, how are we not going to do that hurtful thing

over and over and over again in our relationship? Someone said this, it takes one person to forgive, it takes two persons to reconcile.

And that's really what fix it is. Hey, how am I gonna take this thing that was wounding and hurtful and what are we gonna agree to? What are we gonna change so that we don't keep hurting each other like that again? When, when Lisa and I first got married, we were horrible about arguments. I mean, whoo.

And, Lisa grew up in a home where they yelled all the time. They yelled about everything. I love you. I just yelled about everything. I grew up in this very very quiet home and, it it was just

completely different for me. So we would have a moment and Lisa was frustrated with me. I know that's hard to believe, but Lisa was frustrated with me and and she'd start yelling at me.

I I had never experienced something like this and and so I I decided, you know, I'm I'm gonna de escalate this And so when she started yelling, I simply smiled. I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought, you know, she's gonna made it worse.

I'm just gonna first couple of years of our and we said so many hurtful things. We treated each other so poorly in moments of disagreement, And then we decided, hey, we got to stop this cycle of having to forgive each other over and over and over again for how we treat each other when we don't agree.

How are we going to fix this? And so we just we came up with some rules. Hey, when I'm frustrated with you, I'm not gonna raise my voice. I'm I'm not gonna call you names. I'm I'm not gonna bring up past offenses. I'm not gonna use words like you always or you never.

Lisa used to say, you never and I'd I'd go, yes, I did. Three and a half weeks ago, I carried out the trash one time. So I I sometimes I do it. We're not gonna use words like never and always. And and when we disagree, it's not about establishing percentage of blame and fault, it's always about fixing it.

How are we gonna change? How are we gonna treat each other from this moment on that's gonna avoid us having the argument, that's gonna avoid us having the hurtful moments in our lives? And what you have to do is say, hey, I I I'm not gonna be in this endless cycle for forty years of wounding

one another. We're we're gonna we're gonna come up with a plan that says, hey, this is this is how we're gonna behave differently. This is what we're gonna do differently. You ever heard somebody say, hey, I'm getting married, but I'm not gonna change.

If that's what you're thinking, don't get married. Good marriages cause both parties to change. Can I blow your mind for a minute? God did not give us marriage to make you happy. He didn't.

But remember a moment ago, said, hey, Lisa and I have a thrilling marriage because we follow what God but that's not why God gave you marriage. He didn't give you marriage to make you happy. God gave you marriage to make you like Jesus. And when two sinners come together and say, hey, I'm sorry. Hey, I'm gonna behave

differently. You and I become more like Christ.

How do I fix it? So we don't do this over and over again? Here's what you need to know. The best marriages have empty fences. The best marriages have absolutely refused. I'm not going to take the hurts and the wounds and memorialize

them. I'm not gonna keep tacking them up and so that there comes the day I don't even see the man that I loved. I don't even see the woman that I loved anymore. They keep the fence empty. So here's my challenge. Here's what I'm gonna ask you to do.

This week, this week, will you take two boards down? Will you go to two of the things that are left undone, two of the things that still kind of stand in between. And if it means you're just gonna forget, you're gonna go, hey, that's how God made my wife. That's how

God created or they were having a I'm just gonna forget it. Or maybe you say, you know what? Our marriage needs a hero and so I'm gonna step forward and say, hey, can we work on forgiving each other for that? Can we take that board down?

Or you go to fix it. You say, I I just don't want this crazy, so I don't wanna keep doing this for the rest of our Can we talk about how we're gonna treat each other or behave differently? Would you take two boards down this week, and then next week, two more, and then two more until you have an empty fence and a great

marriage. Let's pray. Hey, dear heavenly father, is so intuitive, it's so natural for us that when someone hurts us and when it hasn't been dealt with, we we just wanna memorialize it. We wanna put it up there and say, okay, that's one more thing I can't trust you my heart with.

And so our heart begins to withdraw and withdraw. And when we finally put enough boards up, when we finally memorialize enough of the offenses of our partner, we just go, I fell out of love. No, you didn't.

You failed to reconcile the pains and the struggles of marriage. You built a fence and you can no longer see the person you fell in love with. So God, we just come back to you. We're going to do what scripture said. We're going to learn how to forgive. We're gonna fix the things that we've done that keep causing the wounds.

We're gonna let our love cover a multitude of shortcomings. This we pray in Jesus name. Amen.