You are not responsible for what happened to you in the past, but you ARE responsible for what you do with your life now. Do you have the courage to be who you were meant to be? (Cathryn L. Taylor)

When we marry we bring all of the experiences of our past with us-both positive and negative. These experiences have shaped so much of how we view things and how we conduct ourselves in every situation. While we can’t change the past we do have the power to change the present and future. That’s what we learn this week from Dr. Gary and Barbara Rosberg’s book, “Healing the Hurt in Your Marriage” (Tyndale House Publishers).

We feel the points they share are key to helping us have a healthy marriage and will give us the ability to leave the right kind of legacy to our children. This is what they wrote:

For many years now, Barb and I (Gary) have heard a litany of familiar complaints from husbands and wives who came into their marriages negatively influenced by our culture and their families of origin.

Speaking of their own marriages and hurts, they say things like: “I just don’t know how to do this right”; “I grew up in a dysfunctional home, so I don’t know what normal is”; “No one ever taught me how to deal with conflicts”; “My parents’ example is so ingrained in me, I’ll never be able to change.”

You may feel the same hopelessness, the same inability to change. You may feel destined to live out the same ineffective patterns in your own marriage. But that’s like giving up on a garden because the soil is too hard or too rocky or infested with weeds. Have you ever hear of a pick, shovel, hoe, soil amendments, and a little hard work?

In the same way you can change the condition of soil and unlearn bad patterns of dealing with conflict and learn new ones. It’s never too late to learn and implement the biblical principles for forgiving love.

It is our God-given responsibility to cultivate good soil in our marriage relationships so that our children and grandchildren will have a biblical pattern to follow in their marriages.

The psalmist wrote: “For [God] issued his decree to Jacob; he gave his law to Israel. He commanded our ancestors to teach them to their children, so the next generation might know them—even the children not yet born—that in turn might teach their children. So each generation can set its hope anew on God, remembering his glorious miracles and obeying his commands” (Psalm 78:5-7).

As you divorce-proof your marriage through forgiving love, you will help your children to divorce-proof their marriages.

So what are you doing to alter the patterns you learned? How are you making your marriage different from that of your parents? How can you bequeath to your children a family legacy that is more biblical and positive than that of your family of origin?

You look at this responsibility in two ways. You can think of it as a tremendous burden and a lot of hard work. Or you can welcome it as an opportunity to pass on to your children something that was not passed on to you. Even if you didn’t grow up in a healthy home, you can commit yourself to developing healthy patterns for resolving conflict.

The family you came from is important, but it’s not as important as the family you’ll leave behind. Identify from your family of origin the barriers to communication and healthy conflict resolution. Gain whatever insight you can from the past, deal with the emotional pain of it, and then move on to developing new patterns that include confession and forgiveness of offenses and healing of hurts.

As you leave behind and begin to create a more positive present, you’ll bless the next generation. One way or another, you will leave your handprints all over the personalities and hearts of your children. Will you leave behind a generation that will reach the world for Christ, or will you give up at the daunting task and let them go their own way?

What are you doing to give your children the spiritual training and skills they will need for their lives and marriages? What kind of godly heritage are you leaving them? The key is found in establishing a home that honors God, a home where each individual is encouraged to develop a relationship with Jesus, a home where people make mistakes and fail each other but recognize they have the power, through God, to be transformed.

Conflict in your marriage is inevitable, but you don’t have to remain trapped in the dysfunctional patterns of resolving conflict you learned from your parents or the world around you.

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Cindy and I believe that each of us as couples have the responsibility to break free from whatever negative patterns we brought into our marriage. Even if we’ve been married 30+ years it’s not too late to change. After all isn’t that what Jesus specializes in—making us into new creations? 

We encourage you to seek out whatever help you may need to get to the place where you have the healthy God honoring marriage that your children deserve to have modeled for them. Just don’t buy the lie any longer that you’ll “never be able to change.” Through Christ, God is able to make all things new!

Steve and Cindy Wright