Business partnerships have been dissolved over petty differences. Marriages have ended in divorce because the couple were caught up in the thick of thin things—things of no apparent consequence to either when asked about the matter later. Getting caught up in the thick of thin things has caused untold pain and anguish between family members, couples, friends and business associates. What is the thick of thin things?
The thick of thin things is getting upset or angry over minor differences of opinion or the way things are done when the outcome is the same regardless. We recently heard Hillary Clinton say at a congressional hearing about the tragic event at Benghazi, “What difference does it make?” She was trying to make a thin thing out of a thick thing. A good example of a thin thing was after my wife and I had first married, she noticed that I tied my shoes so that the bow remained in an almost vertical position along the strings of my shoe. She thought that I should make the bow end up crossways from the strings if I would just start tying my shoes in a way that she was ready to show me. I had been tying my shoes my way for over twenty years, and I wasn’t planning to relearn. When she was convinced it mattered not to me, it wasn’t brought up again. That was a thin thing that we did not let become thick. When our kids were growing up, there were sometimes bickering over minor and even silly things. “Dad, Make him stop looking at me!” My response might have been, “You wouldn’t know he was looking at you unless you were looking at him.” Life is complicated enough without letting thin things interfere with our day to day. It is true that some strange and quirky things some people do can get to anyone after a while, but at the same time, we have to become mature enough to learn how to deal with quirky things without causing a major scene or a family battle.
Thin things are what newlyweds will have the biggest problem with. A wife will expect the husband to do many things the way her dad did them. On the other hand, the husband will expect the wife to do things the way his mother did them. If they can’t accept the differences, or if they can’t become accustomed to the differences, there will naturally be problems. They will have gotten caught up in the thick of thin things. Maybe the wife’s dad helped with the dishes every evening after dinner. So when her husband sits down to watch TV and leaves her to do them on her own, she will be very disappointed and feel hurt. At the same time, if the new husband expected his wife to clean off the table and wash the dishes right after supper, and she doesn’t, he will be disappointed. We will all have our own way of doing things, and we have to let those differences become the norm in a new household. May God bless us to learn tolerance and patience because those two attributes are considered the most important and significant attributes persons can have in a marriage. That is if a marriage is going to be a happy one as well as long lasting.