The Problem With Concrete
By Judy Burrows
I hit the driveway hard.
I’d lost my balance on the sidewalk and attempted to regain it. My brain was yelling to my feet,
“Do your job!”
The downward slope of the sidewalk spoke louder.
You even managed to hit your head. That was my first thought as I lay on the driveway. Then I heard my husband's voice, heavy with compassion. "Oh, honey..."
I was not in any hurry to rise. Something felt wrong. The fall felt traumatic. Cement is really hard, my brain harped. Not one bit of grace to it.
As my husband darted to my side, there was comfort: He knew where I was. I wasn’t alone. I wouldn’t have to yell for someone's attention.
My feet had failed me. But my husband did not. He supported my weight back into the house. Turns out my brain wasn’t wrong. X-rays showed a broken pelvis.
Suddenly bedridden, something deeper than my bones felt horribly fractured. Somewhere in the week after, as I stretched the wrong way in pain and tears, I told my husband, “I really feel broken.”
Truthfully, because of sin—that’s always my condition. But I don’t always feel it.
A big reason for that? A husband who’s acquired a significant tenderness. I think of him as a grace-partner: Someone absorbing my weakness—my frailty, or just plain sin.
He yields a lot more than concrete, providing a soft landing for my constant missteps. Which means in the end, a lot less gets broken.
Thankfully, my pelvis is one whole piece again. I carry no evidence of that humbling afternoon. But I want to have more give with others, with my husband—a cushion for the ways our bodies and souls fail, absorbing each others’ failings with kindness neither of us deserve.
Read four tips for offering more grace in your marriage.
The Good Stuff: But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved. (Ephesians 2:4-5)
Action Points: Life is hard like cement sometimes. How can you give your spouse grace today? Grace has a give to it. Where does your spouse need some give in his/her life right now?
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