'The one thing guaranteed to end all marriages.'

And so much more.

You may think this is a marriage article, but it’s not. At least not fully. I know, that seems weird based on the title. But stay until the end and you’ll see why.

Nearly a decade ago, I read an article that went viral. This was before “viral” was codified as a term in pop culture—before TikTok and algorithms were prioritizing mindless doom scrolling and ideas and articles of substance could still break through.

The author was someone I had never heard of named Meg Marie Wallace. (However, since this article we’ve become friends. She’s a beautiful writer.) The title was catchy and provocative: “The one thing guaranteed to end all marriages.” It wasn’t some click bait hack, though. Click bait promises something it doesn’t deliver. But this article certainly delivered. And it hit hard.

The premise is simple: If you fall into this one trap, your marriage is on life support. And unless you do something drastic, don’t be surprised if it dies. I knew the article was really gaining popularity when, after I had read it, my father-in-law randomly sent it to me.

So what is the “thing” that is guaranteed to end all marriages? It’s a “hard heart.” What exactly is that? Meg explains:

I am more convinced than ever that adultery, lies, deceit, substance abuse, hiding, blame shifting, anger, fighting…although each devastating in their own way, are merely symptoms that point to the root problem underneath it all […] hardness of heart.

Hardness of heart is…

-lacking genuine sorrow over sin.

-continuing to go back again and again into temptation, lies and deceit.

-choosing to think of yourself as most important.

-choosing what’s best for you and not the other.

-the small lies and huge lies that you convince yourself are not a big deal.

-being unteachable.

-tearing down with words.

-comparing and contrasting your wrongs against the other and making the judgement that “theirs is worse.”

-responding with defensiveness.

-the need to always be in control.

-waiting for the other to say sorry first.

-demanding the other change first.

-thinking more of what you deserve instead of what you can give.

-focusing more on being right than on becoming righteous.

-what you can get out of someone instead of how you can invest in them.

-the refusal to forgive.

-the refusal to humble yourself to ask for forgiveness.

-saying you forgive, but never letting go.

-asking for forgiveness and then going back to do the same thing again.

-magnifying the weaknesses and minimizing the strengths of the other, while magnifying the strengths and minimizing the weaknesses of yourself.

-justifying wrongful actions because they “started it first.”

-spending more time trying to find an official clinical diagnosis to explain away their issues than looking in the mirror to address your own.

-preserving your own well-being at the expense of the other.

-reading this list and thinking someone else should be reading this…

That’s quite a list. A good one. A convicting one. And while I want you to spend time digesting it, I said at the beginning that this is not a marriage article.

So what is this article about?

It’s about how our problems run deeper than we think.

Do you have a marriage problem? Check the soil of your heart.
Do you have an anger issue? Check the soil of your heart.
Are you constantly disappointed in your spouse? Check the soil of your heart.
Are you turning to substances too much? Check the soil of your heart.

I could keep going.

Here’s the reality: the soil of our hearts is a bigger issue than we realize.

I’m currently doing a deep discipleship program at my church. Over the weekend, our recovery pastor gave a talk about sanctification (among other things). He talked about two aspects of progressive sanctification called mortification and vivification. I know, those are some big words. But they mean two things: killing and filling.¹

Mortification = killing your sin.
Vivification = filling your life with what’s better/best.

Progressive sanctification is that process of killing and filling. In order to demonstrate his point, he talked about taking care of your lawn. It’s not enough just to weed your grass, he explained, you also have to feed it. That’s why we have “weed and feed.”

Stick with me.

Now, when he got to the part about weeding, he went another step further. And this is the point I want to make to you today—and it ties in with hardness of heart.

“One thing I’ve learned about weeding,” he said, “is that it’s really hard to get to the root of a weed if the soil is hard. The softer the soil is, the easier it is to get not only the weed but also its roots. And the same is true in our lives. If the soil of our heart hard, it’s a lot more difficult to truly get to the root.”

Oh, how true.

I talk a lot about getting to the root of our misordered/disordered desires. My alcoholism was a symptom of a deeper issue, after all. “Issues,” really. But when was I really able to address those issues? When my heart was finally softened. For me that involved hitting rock bottom on a beach in Miami, swimming in the ocean in my own feces at 1am. The Holy Spirit used that to finally break through to my hardened heart. The ground was tilled up. The weeding—the true, deep weeding—could finally begin.

On Sunday, I held our second Veritas Recovery community call. I had been thinking about this example since I heard it on Saturday morning and I posed a question to the group that I want to pose to you now:

What are you doing to soften the soil of your heart?

We focus a lot on getting the weeds out. They are ugly. But unless we get to the root, they will just grow back. And in order to get to the root, we have to soften the soil of our hearts.

What Meg said nearly 10 years ago rings just as true today. But here’s the caveat: The one thing guaranteed to end all marriages is also the one thing guaranteed to end so much else. It’s creeping at the doorstep of your life and threatening way more than you realize.

If you’re stuck doing the thing you don't want to do and find yourself beating your head against the wall, may I suggest that before you continue any more attempts at behavior modification you instead work on softening the ground of your heart?

How do you do that? It starts with abiding in Christ. Daily time with him. Start with five minutes. Listen to worship music. Read his word. Get a devotional. Put on a sermon. Do spiritual things! I promise you it will work. Not overnight. Some of us have hearts with highly compacted soil. But it will work.

How do I know? Through personal experience. But also because God’s word can’t not work. I know that’s hard to grasp. It seems like it doesn’t have “handles.” But I’m telling you it’s true.

So try it. Test it. Do it. Get to work on the soil of your heart. As Meg says, “Let today be the day you soften your heart.”

For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts […].

—Psalm 95:7-8

Photo by Al Elmes on Unsplash

1. I talk about this in my book in greater detail. You can go more in depth here.