Sometimes, we get so caught up on the hard questions that it’s the question we focus on instead of the answer. When I was growing up, I remember asking my grandmother about how did you know when you were going to have a marriage that lasted for happily ever after and she said that was a hard question.
I remember asking, how did you know if you could love someone forever and she said that was a hard question. Hard questions are hard because you can’t answer them definitively. Faith is a hard question – because you have to accept it with only the evidence of things not seen. Hard questions are not something we can ask other people – they are questions we ask of ourselves.
Getting Stuck in the Rut
When you get hung up on the hard questions, you can find yourself treading water and getting stuck in a rut to really play out the metaphors here. In our relationships, those hard questions can so preoccupy us – that we forget to see what is in front of us and we can blame our spouse for the inability to answer that hard question.
So what hard questions can trouble your relationship?
Consider for a moment, your spouse lies to you or betrays you in some fashion. The betrayal may or may not have been intentional, but the betrayal exists regardless. The hard question that faces you now is two fold – can you trust them again and can you forgive them. You may think these are one and the same, but they are not. You can forgive someone and never quite trust them again and you may believe you can trust them again, but not be willing to trust them.
Focusing all of your intent on the questions can leave you fumbling for the answers, because the question is definitive – the answers are not. There is an old saying that truth is a three-edged sword, your point of view, their point of view and the actual truth. So when you get overwhelmed and locked up on the hard question – consider for a moment letting the question go and instead looking at what is. Examine how you actually feel rather than trying to analyze how you can answer the question.
How do you cope with the hard questions?
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