Martin Luther King, Jr. and Your Marriage

Martin Luther King, Jr. changed the United States as much as almost anyone in our history. However, he was not born into greatness. He was born into unfairness and brutal penalties for aspiring to much of anything.
He chose to risk his career, his income, his physical safety, and his wife and children to step up to the plate and take a swing at perhaps making a difference. He chose it while in college, according to his roommate at the time, who later helped me with my City Planning thesis at MIT.
His first few warmups were not quite what he had pictured, but he kept at it. Eventually, he knocked it out of the park. He was murdered for it, but what he had accomplished remained and grew.
What does this have to do with your marriage? Everything, if you are biding your time and biting your lip while you wait for your spouse to change. Everything, if you fear taking a risk to make your marriage one you could enjoy, because it might possibly result in your husband or wife choosing divorce. Everything, if your needs go unmet and you heap piles of resentment on top of this pain by expecting your spouse to meet them. Everything, if the penalty for doing what you need to do is brutality at the hands of your mate, but you fear being on your own even more than this.
When you choose to change your marriage, to make it one you can enjoy, there is no guarantee it will work. Yes, you could run into a lot of resistance. Yes, you could end up divorced or with a lot more responsibilities. It might not work, but even if it doesn’t, you will become a different, stronger person, and so will your children. Better yet, if it does work, it will change the world you, your mate, and your children live in.
Worth thinking about on this day when we remember the man who stepped up and took his swing at changing everything.