Tag Archives: Marriage

Marriage Matters—What Have You Learned?

“Lord, what have I learned about marriage over all these years?”

Loaded question potential right there.

His answer could be either “not nearly enough” or “quite a lot.” But what I heard back wasn’t either of those answers.

The question isn’t “how much have you learned”, but “how much do you obey what you’ve learned?”

*head goes back* Ugh.

Fine. But for the purpose of this blog post, I’m going to stick to what I’ve learned and we can all just assume I don’t always have stellar follow through. Fair?

And He said to all, “If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me. (Luke 9:23)

Self-denial is the life of a Christian, but it is practiced most vigorously in the context of marriage. In the beginning it doesn’t really feel like dying, you know? When all you want is the happiness of this wonderful creature who now shares your bathroom. And then.

One day you realize they are insanely messy with no rhyme or reason to the way they live their life on the daily, and have an “I’ll get to it when I get to it” code for life. They never turn off lights, have the sleep schedule of a toddler, prefer to talk in partial sentences and let you figure out the rest, and would live on “something snacky” if you let them. And if you tell them they can’t do something it’s a sure thing they’ll do that thing, even if they don’t really want to do that thing. Because, don’t tell them what to do. Besides all that, what makes them laugh one day makes them cry the next day, and you don’t know what day it is, ever (all of that is me, by the way. all me.).

Those are the more lighthearted things my husband has learned about me. There are more, less lighthearted, that we’ve both learned about one another. Things that broke us. Hurt us. Almost ended us.

And this is where the dying begins in earnest. Where the forgiveness, grace, humility, and bearing with one another that the bible talks about becomes the fork in the road. Follow Jesus, or do it our own way. One brings life, the other brings death.

Marriage has taught me how to be kind when I don’t want to be kind. How to swallow my pride and apologize for my snarky tone of voice that they clearly deserved. How to forgive even the egregious, because I was forgiven by Jesus and have no other leg to stand on.

The statement “marriage is hard” is such an understatement. But so is “marriage is good.” Both are true at the very same time, because while we make it hard, God made it good.

Every lesson I’ve learned about following Jesus, I’ve learned in the context of marriage. And one of the most shameful things I discovered is that I was a way better Christian to other people than I was to my husband. Oof. That was hard to admit, but I know I am not the only one who can say it and hopefully by going first, someone else will find the courage to admit it so that it can change.

God has taught me more through marriage than I could ever convey on this page. Surprisingly, or maybe not, is that He has used marriage to teach me more about Himself than about me, or my husband. I’ve learned that He is everything I need. That He is so very good. Faithful. Patient. Full of grace and generous with compassion, and powerful enough to change hearts and minds that we could never have changed on our own.

Think about it…

? What is the hardest thing you’ve learned through marriage?

? What is the best thing you’ve learned through marriage?

? How are you doing at obeying what you’ve learned?

Marriage Matters—Choose Your Battles

Very few battles are worth fighting or even winning. Stop and think about the last real argument you had with your spouse. I mean the argument that caused one of you to get hurt or brought a cold silence that lasted for at least a day. Do you even remember what it was about? Was it worth it?

After almost 40 years, many of which were lived at war with my husband, I have learned a few hard lessons:

♥ Very few arguments are worth the price of peace that is paid to win them.

♥ Being right is a small consolation when it damages my friendship with my spouse.

♥ Winning an argument is a much smaller victory than the victory of giving up my need to win it.

♥ Not every battlefield needs to have my flag on it.

♥ It’s harder to stop a battle in motion than it is to walk away before it begins.

♥ Marriage battles are generally fought with words, and our tongues are hard to control once they are loaded for battle. Our words used to win an argument often lead us to long-term regret and not much else.

So what are the battles worth fighting? First, I think that question needs to be posed to God. He alone knows. The best I can do is give you my opinion on two good questions to ask yourself and the Holy Spirit.

? Will someone else be harmed if I don’t fight this particular battle, especially someone in my family?

? Will not engaging in this conflict result in my disobedience to God’s word, or compromise my walk with Christ in any way?

Hopefully, your answers to those questions will serve as guardrails in your decisions in conflict. I absolutely believe there are times when we should dig in our heels, but when we do, we should be quite certain that God is dug in with us. But most of the time, we should back down. If my husband is asking me to rob a bank with him, that will be a hard no from me, and I will not be moved from that position. But if I think we need to have a go ’round because he won’t do his fair share around the house, even after numerous “discussions”, then I’m gonna have to count the actual cost of going to battle over it rather than just letting it go.

Those are simple and easy scenarios, and not based on real events, but our lives are much more complicated than that, I know. So please allow me to submit this for your consideration:

Most of our battles are fought to the death because we are prideful, not because we are right.

Choose your battles well, my friend, and remember that more often than not, no battle at all is the best choice.

Marriage Matters: The Motive of Prayer

Me

I had been asking God for so many years to change my husband. Begging God, really. But I saw little movement over almost two decades. Makes a girl weary, you know? Finally, God made a change, and that change was in me. 

During the very difficult beginning of our restoration season, God allowed me to see things through a very different lens. It was the lens of heaven, seeing my husband with eyes of love and compassion over his brokenness. Seeing him as God sees him…as a child of God, hurting, and in great need of the Father’s healing. For his sake, not mine. And that is where the change came. In the motive of my prayer.

I realized that all those years I wanted my husband to change so that my life would be easier; so that I wouldn’t have to deal with his anger, his pride, or his control. I wanted him to change so that I could relax and maybe be happy for a change. 

You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and don’t receive because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures. (James 4:3)

This was the verse that God first used to address my prayer life, specifically my prayers for my husband. This is where I began to learn that motives matter to God, and my motive in prayer was me, more often than not. 

As my view of my husband changed, so did my motives. As I saw what God saw, my heart broke for my husband more than it broke for me. And when I began to pray out of a genuine desire to see him free, to see him know the deep love of His Father, to know his worth – the changes I had prayed for began to happen. Little bits at a time for sure, but they were there. 

Discovering that God, not my husband, is my source of happiness and peace was a shift I needed that enabled me to begin to pray with Godly motives rather than selfish ones. 

If you are weary in prayer for your spouse, or anyone else for that matter, let God call out your motives. It will be hard, but so very worth it.

For more on my marriage restoration – visit here. 

genesis 24: what matters

As he neared the end of his life, there were two things that Abraham knew for sure:  First, Isaac could not go back. The faithfulness of God would move Isaac forward to the promised land, not back to a former homeland.

{The faithfulness of God will move you forward, toward promised land, not back to a land He called you out of to follow Him.}

The other thing Abraham knew was that Isaac should marry a woman from Abraham’s kin, not from the Caananites. Abraham knew that God’s people entering into such a covenant relationship with a pagan people would not be a good idea.  

Who the people of God enter into covenant with is still important to Him. It remains a bad idea for a Christian to marry someone who does not follow Jesus.

So Abraham’s servant is sent to find a wife for Isaac from among God’s people. Naturally, the servant prayed for God’s help to find the right one.

{Is that what comes naturally to God’s people today? The servant believed that God knew who Isaac should marry, and prayed He would reveal her. I wonder if that feels archaic to us. I wonder if we have forgotten that God’s wisdom is far more necessary than our physical chemistry or attraction to someone. I wonder if we are teaching the generation coming up that marriage is a covenant, not a checkbox that needs to be marked by a certain age, and that God is the best one to reveal who we should marry.}

And then we see this-

“Before I had finished praying silently, there was Rebekah coming…”

Before he even finished praying, God’s answer was seen coming. Contrast that with this-

“…for from the first day that you purposed to understand and to humble yourself before your God, your prayers were heard. I have come because of your prayers. But the prince of the kingdom of Persia opposed me for 21 days.” – Daniel 10:12-13

Daniel had gone into mourning for 3 weeks, seeking God. The statement above was made by the angel who had been sent in answer to Daniel’s prayer. 

In the case of Abraham’s servant, the answer to prayer appeared before the prayer was even finished. With Daniel, he prayed for 3 weeks before he saw any kind of movement, because the answer had been contested. But it had been sent from the first day Daniel began to pray! 

My takeaways from this chapter:

  • Direction matters. With God, it is always forward movement. Don’t believe the lie that the promises of God are behind you.
  • Marriage covenant matters. Do not assume that it isn’t important to God who you marry, or who your children marry. Don’t leave such an important decision up to feelings. Seek God.
  • Prayer matters. That’s why it is so heavily contested. Don’t give up because it’s taking too long. Keep praying!

the writing in the dust

Twenty-two years and seven months ago I surrendered my life to Christ. I was an emotional wreck, my marriage was a mess, I had a 3 year old daughter and was 9 months pregnant with my son. I was in crisis and, for the next twenty years or so, I remained in crisis. My marriage went from bad to worse to dead, while at the same time my daughter went spiraling out of control into self-destructive darkness.

In the midst of all of that, I discovered God. He taught me how to fight, and how to run for cover behind Him while the enemy assaulted my family relentlessly. I came to know His faithfulness, His power, and His own relentlessness to protect and defend that which is His. I came to know my all powerful, ever faithful God through a very long time of crisis. And now, my marriage is restored, and both of my kids are living lives sold out for Jesus. The dust has settled, and God stands victorious over the enemy who sought so hard to destroy a family. So for the past two years I have been trying to figure out what this nagging feeling deep inside of me is about. Why do I feel like I am wandering aimlessly around, looking for something I cannot define? This morning I figured it out. Actually, God figured it out and then told me about it.

I don’t know how to do relationship with God without a crisis.

For two years I have blamed this emptiness, this total dissatisfaction inside of me on everything from empty-nest syndrome to menopause, and my latest one…depression. All of those things are true in my life, but they are simply words to describe my behavior. They don’t explain the ache deep inside of me that co-exists with complete numbness. My empty nest isn’t the real reason that I feel more lost than found, or why the scriptures that gave me life all those years now look like just words on a page. This is me, being real. Because I can’t be anything else right now. I don’t have the strength for it.

But at least I know what it is now. I feel as though God just wrote it in the dust on my dining room table (because depressed, menopausal women who live in empty nests don’t dust very often), and He and I just are staring at the truth in that dust. Now what? Do I introduce myself to this omnipotent Being who just pulled my family from the wreckage of hell, as we both stand here in the after-the-war silence? What do I say, when shouting and declaring His promises over my family seems out of place now?

It was the voice of my daughter that God used to write the truth in that dust. We had a conversation this morning…her in Africa, me here in this very quiet house in Illinois. As I told her a little bit of my “empty-nest” woes, she matter of factly said this, in so many words:

“Being a wife and mother is a gift God gave to you, but it is not why He created you. You were made for relationship with Him, so maybe that’s what you need to concentrate on now.”

That’s what I heard my daughter saying to me. But what I saw God writing in the dust was, “You don’t know how to be in relationship with Me outside of a crisis”.

So, here’s the deal. I love God. I love His Word. I know His faithfulness and His power to heal and restore the most broken things. I know Him as a victorious God that puts the enemy to flight, chases after prodigals until they chase Him back, and turns hearts of stone into hearts of flesh. I know Him in the rage, chaos and deafening sounds of battle. I know my place and my purpose in the war.

I’m just unsure of what to do in green pastures, beside quiet waters.

Standing across from Him, staring at the truth, I could think of only one thing…

“My heart says of You, ‘Seek His face!’ Your face, Lord, I will seek.” (Ps. 27:8)

what did i expect?

Blind people see. Lame people walk. The unclean are now clean. Deaf people hear. Dead people are now alive. And the lost are being found. Blessed is the one who doesn’t walk away because he was expecting something else.

That was Jesus’ answer to John the Baptist’s inquiry from prison:  “Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?” (Matthew 11:-6)

Then Jesus asked the crowd about their expectations of John the Baptist. Only those expecting a prophet would not have been disappointed.

Jesus described “this generation” by their expectations, and the fickleness of those expectations. “That” generation may be no different than “this” generation.

The Messiah that was “expected” would have been a royal warrior. One who would overthrow the oppression of the Roman rule and establish the Jewish Kingdom. To say the least, He was not what they expected. Turns out, they expected far too little of Him.

What about us? Are we any different? I know some who have walked away because they didn’t get what they expected from Jesus. The problem is not who Jesus is or what He does or doesn’t do. The problem is what we expect of Him.

We expect Him to change our spouse so that we can have a happy marriage. He instead teaches us the true meaning of dying to ourselves. We expect Him to keep us employed so we can pay our bills. He takes away our job, and we learn dependency on the One who provides when there is no provision in sight. We make a plan for our lives and expect Him to make it happen. He throws out our plan and we find ourselves in the middle of something we never dared to dream up, and we have no idea where we’re heading or how to get there. So we have to continually seek Him for our next step. We expect a life without pain or suffering. We get troubles, trials, and suffering that bring us face to face with mercy, comfort, and a place of refuge like no other. We expect happiness, not realizing that happiness is fleeting. He gives us joy, which abides in the deep place of our heart even in the midst of difficulty. We expect punishment and receive forgiveness.

We expect a “saved” life to be lived out on this earth basically the way we see fit. We expect to see Jesus in heaven, but until then, we’re on our own for the most part. We expect to have lives that won’t really matter or make a difference. We expect to have a relationship with Jesus that doesn’t include His Body, that doesn’t require us to walk in submission to others, that doesn’t seek to force our hearts out into the open. We expect our lives to be, well, ours.

You see, we too expect too little of Jesus.

Until our expectations of Jesus change, He will never meet them. Hopefully, we won’t walk away before we realize that He has far surpassed every expectation.