A Wrench in The Cycle

In the last two blogs, I talked about milestones that can take your marriage to a new level. In the next couple of weeks, I want to talk about the “wrenches” we often throw right in the middle of our marriages that disrupt everything.

The definition of “love” as a noun is, “An intense feeling of deep affection.” The synonyms are fondness, tenderness, warmth, and intimacy. The definition for love as a verb is, “to feel a deep affection for someone.” Synonyms are to cherish, treasure or to prize. Love as a noun is the feeling and love as a verb is the action. For me, it is a cycle. I love Nancy. It is that feeling deep within me. As I show her that love through my actions and she receives my love, the feeling within me grows and I show my love through more actions, and on and on and on. That cycle has probably been going on for our entire marriage. If it continued, this cycle would help the love in our marriage to keep on growing and we would keep on showing our love. 

But in reality, something gets in the way of the “love” cycle: Wrenches. Wrenches are things we can throw right into the middle of the cycle that disrupt everything. Why would we disrupt this beautiful cycle by throwing a wrench in it? We never needed to throw it. Now that there’s a wrench in things, what do we do? The solution is to deal with the wrench and get the good cycle going again. I’m not sure how many wrenches I had at the beginning of our marriage but there were a lot. Probably more than I would ever want to sit down and count. 

Today there are probably a few left. It’s not that I threw them all right at our healthy marriage cycle, though I did throw a number of them. No, instead of throwing them at my marriage, I decided to throw them away. Far away. Wrenches thrown at your marriage are destructive and cause a lot more work than they were worth. Whatever payoff was there was never worth it. I may still have a few wrenches left but my goal is to leave them. When I stand back and let the love cycle work, our marriage is really good.

Sometimes our wrenches have become such a part of our lives that we do not realize that we are still carrying them or the damage they can do. As long as we carry them there is still the chance that we could throw them. A wrench thrown can be a marriage killer. The marriage may not actually end but it will never reach the potential that God intended it to reach. I want us to look at one of those wrenches this week and the others in coming blogs.

Next Step: How does the love cycle work in your marriage? What wrenches do you have that disrupt the cycle? What would it take for you to leave those wrenches behind as you go forward in your marriage?