It’s my ninth Valentine’s Day with my husband this year. (Though we celebrated early since I am spending the actual day having an amicable break-up with my appendix…). Each year, as we celebrate our relationship, I hope we’ve managed to smooth out a few more of the rough edges; hope that we’re a bit closer to fitting together with better ease and consistency and joy.

It really is such an ongoing process to take two people from different backgrounds and put them together to make one unified, harmonious household. But this year, we’ve found a tool that is better at smoothing than anything we’ve ever had before. And I want to share it in hopes that it might help others change their thinking about how they handle their marital relationship.

I’m rehearsing now for a production of Lamb of God, Rob Gardner’s brilliant oratorio about the last week of Jesus’ mortal life. It is a stunning work of art and I feel privileged to take part. I’m narrating for the second year in a row, so it was about this time last year that I started regularly hearing the beautiful moment in the music when Mary, the mother of Jesus, has just witnessed the crucifixion and sings:

Here despair cries boldly,
Claiming this it’s vict’ry.
Sweeter peace enfolds me:
Hope did not die here,
But here was given.
Here is Hope.

Mary’s tender and heart-wrenching solo continues until the choir joins in with a resonant swell, singing:

Here is love unbounded,
Here is all compassion,
Here is mercy founded!

And Mary repeats:

Hope did not die here,
But here was given.
Here is Hope.

The entrance and build of those choral voices in that moment is something you can feel all the way to your bones. And that phrase “all compassion” stuck with me for its unusual and yet pleasing grammatical structure.

The show went up and closed and a few weeks after, my husband bought a tree care business. Prior to buying the business, we had already scheduled an extended stay to visit his family in Alaska and it dawned on us as the sale finalized that he had an absolutely super-human amount of work to get done for his new clients before we left for our trip. The work had to do with the changing seasons and was therefore quite time sensitive. We looked at the calendar and there just wasn’t enough time to do everything we needed to do in the time that we had.

We realized things were going to fall through the cracks. Our house, which already struggles to stay clean, was probably going to have a few more dishes in the sink. My husband might be home later than he estimated and we realized we had neither the time nor emotional energy to be impatient with each other about it. Suddenly that phrase “all compassion” popped into my head. And I said, “why don’t we just say that for the next four weeks until our trip, we’re just living in all compassion mode.”

We understood and believed that we were both doing our best and it wasn’t going to be enough and we agreed to just accept that. We wouldn’t complain or criticize or point out a shortcoming because we literally did not have the time.

It was agreed. And “all compassion mode” commenced.

Over the next few weeks, I would open the kitchen utensil drawer and see that everything was put back in a mish mash, disregarding the little sections I had designated for particular categories of tools. I would think, “I have to tell him when he gets home that he can’t just ignore the system I’m trying to use”. And then I’d think, “oh wait, all compassion mode. I’ll just put them back and maybe I’ll have the chance to remind him what each slot is for sometime.” And because I didn’t want to just have a month of stifled feelings, I also thought, “I’m grateful he put these away, and if I was really looking at him with compassion and myself realistically, I would realize that he’s doing his best to be helpful and involved and I leave stuff out instead of putting it away all the time.”

Sometimes he would arrive home late and flustered and full of apologies saying, “I’m so sorry I thought I would be here at least an hour ago, but things just didn’t work like I thought.”

I would remind him that the apology wasn’t necessary. We were in all compassion mode.

The more times I stopped and resolved something in my head because we were in all compassion mode, rather than telling him off; or quieted the voice (that sounds a lot like my voice) in his head that would normally be frustrated by his timing or things not going smoothly, the more I began to wonder why we didn’t just always live like that. Why do we ever treat any situation with anything less than “all compassion”?

 

Sagrada Familia basilica in Barcelona.

One of the biggest fights we ever had in the first couple of years of our marriage was in Barcelona, in front of the Sagrada Familia. We had just stepped out from a truly awe-inspiring experience. I was riding high from seeing a building I had no idea would be as astonishing and unusual and moving as it was. We headed out into the plaza to make our way back to our hostel and my husband reached into his pocket to find that his metro ticket had gotten lost.

That metro ticket was supposed to cover all of our transportation during the trip and also got us discounted entrance into many of the museums and attractions we had hoped to go to. Our budget for the trip was razor thin. Though the ticket only cost about $20, it felt like a pretty big blow to me. To make matters worse, I had noticed earlier in the day that its perch in the pocket he had stashed it in was dubious at best and had commented that he should move that ticket somewhere more secure or he would lose it.

Low and behold, he did not move the ticket to a safer spot and then it did, indeed, disappear.

The arguing accelerated pretty quickly and I had an out of body moment seeing the Sagrada Familia behind him and the sights of this beautiful city around while my voice rose in such anger, seemingly out of my control. Eventually we bought a single ride ticket to get on the metro and walked through the dark to our hostel in frustrated silence.

Now, we look back and think how strange and almost comical it was that we got so heated over a matter of $20. (We have also set a new bar on how high an amount of lost or ill-spent money can be before we’re allowed to get upset about it…) But it really wasn’t about the $20, was it? It never is. The most brutal marital argument I’ve ever seen in a film was a fight about using the same knife for the peanut butter and jelly instead of using a separate one so they don’t intermingle. Was that argument really about a tiny bit of jelly getting into the peanut butter? It wasn’t. It never is.

That argument in Barcelona was really about me having foreseen an outcome and offering wisdom to avoid it and basically having my insight ignored. He fought back because he felt infantilized by the idea that I needed to dictate where he kept his ticket, even though in the end, I was right. (Don’t worry, in many other ends, he has been the one that was right.)

We both felt protective of our identities and the other person acknowledging our validity and competence. Nearly any argument we ever find ourselves having in marriage can probably be traced back to someone’s identity feeling threatened even if the subject on the table seems far too petty to go that deep.

We want to be valued and secure and have control. Turns out, by marrying a person outside of yourself, you agreed to permanently relinquish a certain level of control in your life. That person across the kitchen table from you is also a free agent and even if you work incredibly hard on creating a unified family culture and being on the same page, they will never do exactly what you would do in every situation. Nor should they. One of the greatest benefits of marriage is to have someone to lean on that has a strength where you might be weak. But that also means making peace with the fact that that person is not you.

And that person is also flawed. But so are you. Two imperfect people helping each other on the path to perfection was all you were ever going to be. All we can do is our best, and most of the time, that falls a little short, but rather than take the opportunity to point out just how far short, why not switch to all compassion mode?

After all, those lyrics were referring to the atonement of Jesus Christ. If we truly believe in the power of that atonement, we have to believe in its power to redeem our spouses from their imperfections just as we desperately need it to redeem us from ours. Marriage in “all compassion” mode is really a shorthand for “take a breath, stop and see your spouse through the eyes of the Savior” mode. It’s honestly very easy to let go of petty conflicts and irritating foibles when you see that person you’re supposed to love as an ancient spirit with incredible potential who is fumbling through the struggles of a mortal existence just like you.

Perhaps you notice that he left the car for you with absolutely zero gas in it, but then he notices that he could trace every step of your day with the kids because every single thing you used is still out. Do you bring each thing up in a battle of who was worse, or do you high-five and say, “we can both do better and we’re working on it.”? One of those locks you in a competition that you will ultimately both lose and the other has you permanently posted as each other’s best teammate.

Ideally, every line on that part of the song would refer to the environment we are creating within our marriages:

Here is love unbounded,
Here is all compassion,
Here is mercy founded!
Hope did not die here,
But here was given.
Here is Hope.

This Valentine’s Day, one of the best gifts you could give your spouse would be to switch your brain to all compassion mode. Forgive the little missteps as you remember that you make them too. Root for each other. And strive to create a home where someone could sincerely say, “here is love unbounded, here is all compassion, and here is mercy founded”; which is to say create a home where the atonement of Jesus Christ leads the way.