Hi Reader!
We just got back from visiting friends, and somewhere between loading up the car and pulling into their driveway, we picked up an unexpected travel companion: ants, and a lot of them.
By the time we finished unloading, they were everywhere, and our best guess was that they’d smelled the muffin crumbs the kids left on the floor, or maybe we picked them up in a parking lot along the way. Either way, we drove three hours home with them still crawling around, which is not exactly the road trip we signed up for.
So we did what any reasonable parents would do: we pulled everything out of the car, vacuumed every inch, and washed it down. No ants. Now we can rejoice in victory, right? Wrong.
Two days later, they were back. Not inside, our cleaning held there, but crawling all over the outside of the vehicle like nothing had ever happened.
Here’s what stopped us in our tracks: we thought we’d solved the problem because the part we could see looked clean, but the infestation was never just about the inside of the car. It was bigger than what we vacuumed, and it was hiding in places we hadn’t thought to look.
Marriages work the same way.
One sideways conversation, one offhand comment, one small “crumb” left on the floor of your relationship: none of it looks like much at first, but left alone, it attracts something, whether that’s hurt, resentment, or fear, and before long what started as one small thing has spread into distance you can feel spiritually, emotionally, and physically.
And here’s the part that convicted us most: you can clean up the parts people see, the smile at church, the nice photo, the “we’re fine” answer, and still have something crawling around underneath that you haven’t actually dealt with.
So how do you keep your marriage from becoming an infestation? We keep coming back to the same three moves, the same ones behind everything we teach at Oakhaven: Pray it. Plan it. Pursue it.
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Love covers a multitude of offenses.
— 1 Peter 4:8
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1. Keep your heart clean. John 15:3 says, “You are now clean through the word.” That sounds basic, but it’s basic for a reason: Isaiah 26:3 promises perfect peace to the mind that stays fixed on God, and you simply can’t out-strategize a dirty heart. You have to actually clean it, and you have to do it daily.
2. Schedule the inspection. We had to look through every nook and cranny of that car to find where the ants were actually coming from, and your marriage needs the same kind of attention: regular, honest check-ins with your spouse about what’s really going on underneath the surface. Unresolved issues that get buried alive don’t die, they just wait for the right moment to resurface.
3. Let love finish what you started. 1 Peter 4:8 tells us that love covers a multitude of offenses, and honestly, we’re not fully done with these ants yet. But we know the process works if we stay with it, and that’s really the whole point: pursuing your spouse was never meant to be a one-time clean, it’s a commitment you keep making, over and over again.
(Did you catch the 3P formula above? Pray it, Plan it, Pursue it.)
If you want a place to start that conversation tonight, our Conversation Cards are built to help you find the crumbs before they turn into a full-blown infestation.
In expectation,
