Unchaining The Elephant

Unchaining the Elephant

This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!

2 Corinthians 5:17

In his book Teaching the Elephant to Dance, James Belasco describes how young elephants are trained. Shackled by heavy chains to stakes embedded deep within the ground, an elephant learns to stay in its place. When the trained elephant is older, even though it is amply strong enough to uproot such a stake, it will never even attempt it—which is especially ironic given that once an elephant is trained it is no longer even staked. Its conditioning has so limited its sphere of movement that now, with only a small metal bracelet around its foot attached to nothing, it stands in place.

This lesson from the elephant has powerful application to our own lives. Like mighty elephants, many people are bound by earlier conditioned restraints. Just as the unattached bracelets around the elephants’ feet keep them from moving, so some people allow the reminders of past “conditioning” to needlessly limit their personal progress.

Don’t let this happen to you as a couple. We’ve seen it happen all too often. It occurs when a rocky relationship gets to a stalemate because of one partner’s resistance to change. “If you don’t go with me to see a counselor, I’m out of here.” That’s when the couple enters a very scary space, when the resistant person’s deep need for loyalty is threatened to its very core—when that person feels that he or she may lose the other person’s loyalty and commitment altogether.

There’s no need for any couple to let things get so destructive. Even the conditioned elephant will change at this point: when the circus tent catches on fire and the elephant sees the flames and smells the smoke, it forgets its conditioning and runs for its life. And get this: forty-five percent of Americans report that they would change a bad habit if they could.^a The truth is, we can change. Think of a time when you felt stuck but were finally able to make a change. Can you apply the same effort to something that has your marriage stuck, bound by the past? Renew your hope and courage together as a couple and ask God to help you tackle anything that has seemed insurmountable.

When we are no longer able to change a situation . . . we are challenged to change ourselves.

—Viktor Frankl

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