One fabulous Thinker

You hear people say, "What do you bring to the table?" For the longest time, my response would have been, "Nothing. I am the table." But the truth is, when it comes to marriage, we all bring something to the table. Actually, we bring a lot. We bring our insecurities. Our past traumas. Our hurts. Our pain. Our fears. Our baggage. And let's not forget our expectations and opinions because we all have them. But this isn't a piece about keeping score of what we carry. It's about marriage and about a God who heals the places we didn't even know we were still carrying. We bring the things we learned growing up about what love looks like. We bring what we witnessed in our homes. We bring the ways we learned to protect ourselves, to communicate, to shut down, to pursue, to control, to avoid, or to hold on. Some of these things are obvious. Others aren't. Sometimes, it's not just our own baggage that shapes a marriage; it's what we notice in our s...