SAFEGUARD #6
DEALING WITH THE PAST

You may have heard it said that love is blind, and while it’s great to be gracious to our spouse about their past, we must realize that showing grace doesn’t mean ignoring. Too often, relationships get massively blindsided by hurts and dysfunction from our past that get unknowingly brought into our marriage. You may have heard people joke about going to Vegas, making bad decisions, and saying, “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.” Now, that might be a catchy slogan, but anyone with a little common sense or experience knows that the bad decisions from Vegas always find their way out to the surface and, in the process, can destroy current relationships. While you may not have taken a regrettable Vegas-style hangover trip, we all have things in our past from our parents, friends, relatives, or circumstances that have left us scarred, like abuse or tragedy. But, if we don’t deal with it, we’ll see it resurface later in marriage in a destructive way.

Do the Heart Work!

If you’re reading this plan before marriage, this would be a great time to discuss your past relationships and life experiences to see what might need to be healed and dealt with before you get married. I want to encourage you not to gloss over your past as if it’s not a big deal; if it’s not worked on, it will be a potential place of weakness and open access for the enemy to mess with your life. This is why we encourage all engaged couples or even those before engagement to attend pre-marriage classes with your church and do at least a few sessions with a marriage counselor. Those settings will allow challenges to surface that can be worked on. Some of it may be issues that can be dealt with quickly, and other past hurts may require a more in-depth healing process.