Every marriage will face storms. Think about the vows: for better, for worse; for richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health. Did you hear those? Worse. Poorer. Sickness. Those all sound like storms to me — and they were written into the covenant on purpose.
Some storms are natural trials: a loss of finances, a season of failing health. We live in a sin-cursed world, and there will be times when trouble comes to your house through no one’s fault.
But some storms are simply called sin. Your marriage will face storms when one spouse sins against the other. It may be a great sin; it may be a lesser one. I’ve counseled people who complained that their spouse played Candy Crush too much. I’ve also counseled people whose spouse choked them in anger. I’ve counseled people in the midst of adultery, and people whose selfishness had rooted so deep they bought a car without so much as a conversation. Sin comes into marriages. The question is what you do when it does.
Three Choices in the Storm
When the storm is sin, you have at most three choices.
One: you can follow your spouse into that sin. Wrong choice.
Two: you can run the opposite way — but still into sin. Instead of joining your spouse in their sin, you flee from them into the sin of bitterness. Also the wrong choice. Bitterness feels like justice, but it’s just sin wearing a robe.
Three — the right choice: you can linger. Love is patient; love suffers long; love lingers. And love lingers by doing one specific thing: staying at the line of righteousness.
The Balance Beam
We usually picture holiness like this: sin on one side, righteousness on the other, a line down the middle — and our job is to stay as far from the line as possible. That picture has its uses. But let me draw you another one. Jesus said His way is narrow. So picture a balance beam. On one side is your spouse’s sin. On the other side is the sin of bitterness. And your calling is not to leap off either edge, but to stay on the beam. Stay in righteousness. Linger in righteousness.
This is a principle for all your relationships, not only marriage. I once discipled two young men — internships, years of investment, everything. When a division came to the church, one of them began literally walking down through the pews to avoid me at the door, where I stood in the same spot after every service greeting people as they left. Then one day, out of his bitterness, he wrote to me: “You’ve left me.” I was standing in the same place I had always stood — not avoiding him, not refusing to address the issues; I had tried to call him. I hadn’t moved. His sin had moved him, and from where he now stood, righteousness looked like abandonment.
The other young man ignored my counsel on a foolish move that put him an hour and a half from his church, with no other church in view. About a year and a half later, he came and found me — in the same spot — and said, “I’m sorry; I did wrong.” And he paid for it for years, in gas money and long drives, faithfully serving anyway. Sin has consequences. But here’s the point of both stories: I didn’t move. You don’t move from righteousness. You linger there — and you become the fixed landmark a wandering person can navigate back to.
Plant the Flag
First Corinthians 13:7 says love “bears all things.” Picture a soldier planting a standard on the battlefield: “I am not leaving this place. My flag is planted. I am staying here in the midst of the battle.” As Christians, that is exactly what we do — we plant our flag in righteousness, and our line does not move from there.
In marriage, hear precisely what I’m saying: the banner must be planted in righteousness — not at the point of your spouse’s sin, and not out in the far country of your own bitterness. In the storm, you linger on the side of righteousness and you wait for your spouse to return. Reconciliation is only found inside repentance. And on the other side of repentance is where intimacy lives — where you can go through life hand in hand again.
Peter gives the same strategy to wives with unbelieving husbands: they “without a word, may be won by the conduct of their wives” (1 Peter 3:1). If steadfast righteousness can win an unbelieving spouse, how much more a believing one? When one spouse refuses to leave the line — refuses both the sin and the bitterness — they leave the door open for the other to come home.
The Waiting Is the Love
This takes time, and it takes a steadfast will, and neither is easy. It is much faster to quit, and it is much more satisfying — for about a week — to grow bitter. But love is slow to quit. That’s the whole definition.
So when the storm hits your marriage — and it will — don’t follow the sin, and don’t flee into bitterness. Plant your flag. Stand at the line. Wait for repentance, pray toward repentance, and be standing in the same spot when your spouse comes looking for the way back.
Love bears all things. Love lingers.
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