The Wrong Person

By Carole McDonnell

"What is your beloved more than another beloved?" Song of Solomon 5:9
 

I have a secret to tell you: I married the wrong person.
 

Of course, it's not really such a unique secret. Many of us marry the wrong people. I suspect we were in love and love clouded our eyes. We were young, also, and we did not fully understand such issues like compatibility, personality conflicts, and the sad truth that human personality just doesn't change.
 

This is not to say that my husband and I are totally incompatible. We have the same notion of fun: watching scientific or historical programs on TV, reading a book, going out walking. We both are terrible housekeepers. We both are emotional softies who hate seeing the suffering of others. And we were both old fogies even in our teens.
 

My husband, Luke, is the gentlest of men. He rides around town on a tandem with our non-verbal fifteen year old son. The neighbors think he is a saint and he might very well be. After all, he does walk around the house singing hymns and speaking the Word. But, unfortunately, I was not meant to live with a saint. Some of his current personality traits existed before we married, others he acquired through maturity, and many were given to him by the workings of the Holy Spirit. But our marriage has had more than its share of troubles, much of which occurred because of my husband's personality.
 

The honeymoon wore off very early in our marriage. We were emotionally incompatible – he was cold and uncommunicative and I was an emotional chatterbox. I soon realized that he was the most complacent, content person I had ever met. I had never liked aggressive men, but the passivity and easy-going nature of my husband tried even my patience.
 

As God gave us children and our children grew, I realized I was going to be in big trouble. We live in an urban city where the occasional drive-by produces the occasional death, and here I was stuck with a hubby who did not have the smallest ability to discipline our older non-stop-partying son.

Don't get me wrong: I was glad my husband didn't push me to clean the house better; I was glad he didn't cause a fuss if I simply forgot to make his dinner because I had spent the day hanging out with neighbors or writer friends. But why did he not force the kids to do chores? Why did he not tell our older son to keep his partying feet out of clubs?
 

I didn't mind when my husband kept silent while I argued and railed against all his flaws; but why was he generally so incapable of conversation? I often felt bored as if I was talking to a brick wall. In addition, my husband was incapable of defending me against the racist comments from his mother, or defending our sons against cruel children in the neighborhood, or even defending himself against his selfish, greedy boss. And he was as unemotional as they come. Our older son once said to him, "Dad, do you notice you never say 'I love you' only 'I love you too'?"
 

In short, I felt I was stuck with a boring wuss who accepted the sorrows of life as if they were his only due. Of course, all these traits were apparent before we married, but love had blinded me to it. And the flaws I had seen I felt I could change.
 

Over the years, the only thing that changed was that I brought my husband to Christ. And although it was now good to have a true spiritual partner in my life who loved and believed the Word of God, human nature is such that my husband tended to love those Bible verses that gelled with his personality. For instance, all the verses about contentment, not speaking too much, and trusting God to provide for us. Not exactly what I wanted. It got to be that whenever I told him to ask his boss for a raise, he would respond, "God provides for us" and not speak to the boss at all.
 

Throughout my marriage I grew bitter. This bitterness not only hindered my prayers but it created a breach in the hedge around us through which the serpent could attack our family financially and spiritually. I begged God to make me love my husband and to not be bitter against him. After all, we had a son who was diagnosed as autistic and who was always sick. How could I pray to God with a clear pure heart if I was thinking my life would have been better if I had married my richer more ambitious, aggressive ex-boyfriend?
 

God answered my prayer. I began to love my husband again. But this too created a problem. This love created a new despair in me. Again, not exactly what I wanted. It is one thing to hate an imperfect husband if he is cruel and destructive: one can divorce him and move on with one's life. Christians and non-Christians agree on that. Or, one can love a perfect husband; they're easy to love. But when one is in love with an imperfect but good husband, what is one supposed to do? I could only grieve. I felt God had betrayed me, for now I was madly in love with my husband and his traits would continue as before. I told God, in no uncertain terms, that he should have simply allowed me to fall out of love with my husband.
 

I was in a serious bind. If given a chance to go back in time and reject my husband's marriage proposal I would have. I told myself that marrying him had been the worst decision I had ever made in my life and I had destroyed my life by doing so. Yet I also knew that if given a chance to divorce my husband, I would not because none of my friends had a husband who was quite simply the gentlest, kindest men in the world. This was all too clear. He did not speak about his love, mind you. But he showed it all the time.
 

I remember waking up one day to see some new medication my husband had bought for me sitting on the chest of drawers: he was always looking for some cure for me, or rubbing my feet, or massaging me. So what was I to do? Remain in love, yet feel trapped forever? That was when the Lord showed me something.
 

He showed me that although I probably should not have married my husband, yet my husband was the best mistake I made. In that loving, insistent way He has, The Holy Spirit placed before my memory all my previous boyfriends and crushes. What an interesting lot they were! How selfish or self-involved! How depressed! Or how narrow-minded! How full of violence towards others or towards themselves! Or how ineffectual and wounded! It began to dawn on me that my tendency to be a care-taker had caused me to always be attracted to the wrong kind of man.
 

In addition, growing up in a fatherless house with a very strong-willed divorced mother, I was always looking for a new family. ASAP! Slowly it dawned on me: I would have married the wrong person no matter what Yes, if I had not married my husband, I would have married someone far worse: an adulterer, a wife-beater, a possible suicide, a bi-sexual.
 

I was also sickly as a young woman. Not long after the birth of our first son, I would begin to struggle with fibromyalgia. I did not know this, but God knew it. When I married my husband, I had not only married a man who was not argumentative, I had married a man who would take care of me no matter how ill I got, a man who would be a good prayer partner.
 

"Carole," the Holy Spirit declared, "there is no way you would have waited until the right person came along. And even though you are a more mature Christian now, if you were to get a divorce now you still would not wait for the right person or wait to hear my clear counsel."
 

The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth. He knows whereof He speaks. He knows the errors His children make – or will make. And He knows how to make a way – even for those of us whose tendency is to follow the wrong path. Or the Wrong person.
 

So, yes: I married the Wrong Person. But it's the best Wrong Person. And I have been infinitely blessed by my marriage to him. When the Holy Spirit told me about myself, the bitterness against my husband left. Today I can say that I am no longer in despair because of my marriage. I still nag him, of course. But I'm working on that.
 

Christmas 2005 was our twenty-first anniversary, and Valentine's Day 2006 will be the twenty-sixth anniversary of our first meeting. And truly, my husband was the best Valentine's present God ever gave me.
 

Carole McDonnell's fiction, devotionals, poetry and essays have appeared in many publishing venues, in print and online. She is the author of The Easy Way to Write and Teach Bible Studies. She lives in New York with her husband of twenty-one years and their two sons.      If you would like to comment on this article you may contact:

Writers@BlessedLady.com
 

Relationships