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I got this from my friend Benji and I desire to share it with you.

"ademola I wasn't desperate enough to take ownership for my own narcissistic behavior in my marriage until the pain of my dysfunction got so intense that it brought me face to face with myself.

Imagine that...

I was responsible for at least 50% of the issues in our marriage!

Seeing my own mess was one thing..

Taking ownership and actually tidying up my mess, rebuilding trust and redesigning my marriage into something beautiful over a process of years was another.

Which was harder?

Probably the day in, day out taking Ownership.

Retraining myself not to justify being selfish in areas where I had developed bad habits.

Being intentional about asking what love looks like and wholeheartedly going after that.

But I was able to re-vision my marriage...

Now, our marriage was fantastic in some areas, then tragic in others - but only for moments.

Majority of the time we were having a great time...

But there were those moments of chaos, the moments when it's the same old issues.

The conversation we've had 1,000 times that just had us both wanting to check out.

Then they'd pass, we'd focus on the good things but the root cause wasn't resolved.

That was until my pain finally brought me to a place of clarity and I could see how I was being a chaos maker.

Honestly before that, in my mind Alanna was the problem.

But it was impossible for her to take Ownership for my mess.

She had her things to deal with too...

But strangely enough, when I took Ownership for my stuff, hers seemed to come together so much more easily.

So, I re-visioned my marriage.

And I still am.

I'm regularly re-visioning my marriage in the image of a divine blueprint.
Despite all the times marriage is hard or doesn't work out, I'm convinced that there is a divine blueprint for marriage and it looks like a divine romance, an unbroken cycle of divine love that is extravagant, abundant, outrageous, adventurous, exhilarating, intimate, wild and glorious!

Here's the issue.

Me.

I have to keep chipping away at my marriage, keep taking Ownership for the fact that anywhere my marriage is less than a divine romance then there's opportunity for growth.

Michaelangelo carved for nearly 2 years to carve his famous angel out of marble.
He said,

"I saw an angel in the marble so I carved until I set it free."

Our marriage now is more phenomenal than I could have once imagined - but there's an invitation into a limitless divine romance and I want to keep taking the journey.

In the process, sometimes my level of Ownership slips, maybe I'm distracted or for whatever reason I slip into old habits...

I just have to man up and take Ownership again, do some hard things and keep building.

Les Brown has a brilliant quote -

"If you do what is easy your life will become difficult. If you do what is difficult your life will become easy."

That's definitely been true for us.

I know marriage will continually be an invitation to do hard things.

But that's fine with me, because when I do them, I redesign my marriage more and more into the image of the divine romance God always intended it to be.
My biggest encouragement would be, ask yourself what does love look like, and never allow disappointments to dull down or minimise or distort the true definition of love.

True love is nothing less than the most extravagant divine romance we could ever imagine...

In fact it's so much more than we've ever dared to ask or imagine!

Despite all the failures and hard things we have seen or experienced in marriage let's protect the true definition of love by never allowing experiences to corrupt the reality that divine love will always be the purest most extravagant, beautiful, priceless and sacred divine romance conceivable.

Then, let's re-vision, re-design and re-build our marriages according to the blueprint of divine romance that God always had in mind.

Alanna is my best friend and marriage is an exhilarating, romantic, adventure together that explores the limitlessness of love!
..and I haven't even mentioned the unspeakable delight of being parents and Raising Royalty together!

I'll leave that for another time... I've got plenty to say about this and we are currently developing a range of Parenting Content - so keep an eye out for that.

Also, out of the process of our Marriage journey I discovered a powerful blueprint for how to turn a marriage into a "Divine Romance" - it's called "The 7 Sacred Pathways to Intimacy", Alanna and I will be running a Free training on this in June, which is going to be the most vulnerable content we've ever put out.

That training will be happening in the Raising Royalty Facebook Group, if you aren't in it yet - come join us there's lots of great conversations, worship, Spirit filled prayer sessions, missions and training that is right on point for advancing the Kingdom in our dynamic Global Climate right now.

Click here to join us in the Group and the password is: ROYALTY

Looking forward to taking this conversation deeper with you ademola.

May divine romance eclipse everything else that you have ever known and take you into worlds of bliss beyond where you've ever been before!

Benji "DO HARD THINGS" Alexander

P.S. the 7 Sacred Pathways to Intimacy training is brilliant for anyone who wants to build Divine Romance into their marriage, so, even if you aren't married right now, but you want to be, then this will really benefit you as you prepare for marriage.

Sent to: [email protected]

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