ALL FOR A BAR OF SOAP

In Love in the the Time of Cholera, Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez portrays a marriage that disintegrates over a bar of soap. It was the wife’s job to keep the house in order, including the towels, toilet paper, and soap in the bathroom. One day she forgot to replace the soap. Her husband exaggerated the oversight: “I’ve been bathing for almost a week without any soap.” She vigorously denied forgetting to replace the soap. Although she had indeed forgotten, her pride was at stake, and she would not back down. For the next seven months they sleep in separate rooms and ate in silence. Their marriage had suffered a heart attack.

“Even when they are old and placid,” writes Marquez, “they were very careful about bringing it up, for the barely healed wounds could begin again as if they had been inflicted only yesterday.” How can a bar of soap ruin a marriage? The answer is actually simple. Neither partner would say , “Forgive me.”

Forgiveness is critically important to the success of marriage. In becoming soul mates you must wrap and rewrap your partnership over and over with many layers of forgiveness. Why, you ask?
Because forgiveness is the only way to break the inevitable cycle of blame and pain in marriage. Two ppl living together are going to, at some point, get on each other’s nerves. A power struggle will merge over a tit-for-tat issue: “I can’t believe you didn’t buy the cereal I like.”
“Wait a minute, aren’t you supposed to be in charge of the groceries?”
“ Don’t try to pass the blame to me—you said you would buy it”
“ Yes, but I told you to remind me”
“ Why should I? It’s your responsibility.”

Such inane conversation bleats on and on in marriage until one of the partners says, “I’m sorry. Will you forgive me?” Marriage cannot last without forgiveness. If you are looking for fairness, don’t look for it in marriage. Soul mates survive on forgiveness, not fairness.

Forgiving your partner is a way of saying, “I’m human. I make mistakes. I want to be granted that privilege, and so I grant you that privilege.” Charles Williams has suggested that “no word in English carries a greater possibility of terror than the little word as in “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespasses against us.” For this clause in the Lord’s prayer tells us that the condition of forgiving then is to be forgiven; the condition of being forgiven is to forgive.”

So wrap your marriage in forgiveness. “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you” (Eph. 4:32).