Being married to a broken person

Right now, while writing this, I'm sitting in a school awards night ceremony (ok, I wrote this one back in May).  Just a few rows ahead of me is a former student of mine named Clara.  She is cradling the head of her younger brother who has Downs Syndrome (admittedly, I'm not sure of the exact disability).

This is a teen girl.  Teens are often known for their self-absorption, but this girl, instead, deeply loves her brother who is not a 'normal' brother.  Yet, ask Clara about her sibling and she immediately breaks into smiles about him.  Surely, he is an inconvenience, but she chooses not to see him that way.

Each of us has married a broken person.  Your wife or husband brought problems with them into your

marriage.  Surely that problem is, at times, an inconvenience, even an annoyance.

What Clara shows us, though, is that a perspective change can mean everything.

You are the one person out of all of the billions of people on the planet that he or she chose to give their life to.  Instead of seeing her weaknesses as a pariah, could you see the privilege of being the one called to love and heal that hurt?

Instead of seeing "for better or for worse" as a curse, could we all learn to see the divine gift of sharing the struggles of life with one other person?

Does it make it easy?  No.  But, like Clara, it brings the weakness of the other into the context of love and privilege instead of frustration and resentment.