Marriage IV

The saga continues........

If you are actually following this, thank you. I am getting it out on paper for several reasons, most of them having to do with the direction that God is taking our family right now. He is calling us to some things that I never imagined and I need to have my "testimony" about our marriage straight in my head and my heart. I will fill you in more on that later! (It's all good stuff!)

Anyway, where was I?? Stan has stopped traveling, we have moved into a more family oriented neighborhood, things have worked out with Stan's parents, we are homeschooling.......and now in June 2001 I find out I am pregnant again!! Wow! Four children. Believe it or not it is the number I always wanted to have. Two boys and two girls. That remained to be seen, but it was definitely a possibility.

Our lives had changed a lot. We had decided to start attending a different church because I was involved in helping launch a MOPS ministry at this church and we met some really godly people. There were a few people in particular that really befriended Stan and me and really helped us along the path to true spiritual growth. For the first time I found out that God loved me completely and fully when I accepted His gift of salvation. His grace covered all of my sins, past, present, and future when He died on the cross. There was nothing I could do to make Him love me less or more. My church attendence and all my "works" were filthy rags before the throne. He did not really care if I attended church every Sunday or not!! That was huge to me. I grew up Southern Baptist and I heard a lot about Heaven and Hell, but not a whole lot about grace, justification, and santification. I heard a whole lot about Sunday School, Sunday night, Wednesday night and chior practice - but not a whole lot about personal spiritual growth and glorifying God with my life.

So, we began to truly grow and for the first time in my life I felt like I was truly a child of the King. I desired to share my faith and to diligently teach it to our children. Stan began to really grow during this time as well and our marriage was truly getting better and better.

Graham was born in March of 2002 and once again everyone was thrilled with our new addition. Joshua and Bryce were 8 and Lyndsey was almost 4. Everyone was such a huge help to me and we just had a ball taking care of this new little one.

By this time we had a great network of homeschooling friends and we were involved in a co-op with other families that got together every Friday morning to learn together. We met some wonderful friends and things were going really well for Stan at work. The kids were involved in a lot of extra-cirricular activities and we were really rolling along smoothly at this point.

Then, God really allowed things to get a little shaken up for us. We had some things happen at the church we were a part of that really shook us emotionally to the core. I don't want to publish any details of that time because it is over and in the past for us and we still have a lot of friends who attend the church. I have no desire to say anything negative at all, but I can't share our story and skip this part because it was a huge time of spiritual growth for Stan. As a matter of a fact, in my opinion, it was the first pivotal moment for him. His first "crisis of faith" if you will. He had to take a stand on some issues and he had to do some confronting of leadership that was very uncomfortable for him. In order to find the will of God in all that he had to do, he was forced to spend countless hours in prayer and Bible study. It was amazing how he changed during that time. It was by far the hardest thing we have EVER been through, but at the same time I truly would not trade it for anything because it was through this situation that we grew the most spiritually. We had to rely on each other emotionally and spiritually. Many people we were associated with at that time did not understand what we were doing or why. We went through some really hard times with friends and we were scared, confused, and hurt. Through it all God gave us an amazing peace. Truly we felt His peace that passes all understanding, and on the other side of the whole thing, we are thankful for what happened.

It was through this ordeal that we found God's will for our lives. It was because of the time that Stan spent in the Word and in prayer that he finally had the courage to lead our family in a Biblical way. I also changed during this time and soon God had put people in my life to help me grow and change as a wife and mother. Soon I learned how to submit to Stan's leadership and we learned the art of communication. For quite a while after things calmed down in our lives we were church attenders at various churches around town. We were fearful of making a committment anywhere. We attended several local fellowships for a month or two at a time and we spent quite a few Sundays at home studying the Word as a family. It was a really good time in our lives and God used this time to prepare us for the place He is now taking us. Our children were growing in the Lord at this time and we also had Mariana (our former exchange student from Brazil) and her six year old daughter Bia living with us, so we were able to witness to her in a very unique way.

Then, one Sunday in the late Fall of 2005, we found Summit Church.

I'm going to stop here because many of my future posts will be related to what God is doing in our lives and much of that has to do with the people we have encountered at Summit. We have been challenged and stretched and pulled in more ways that I could possibly count by the people He has put in our lives. We have cried out to Him in ways we have never done before and we have found Him always faithful. I will share more about that soon.

I want to wrap up by saying that our marriage was not as bad as it could have been. There was no abuse or adultry, and I know that those are very real things that people struggle with. However, neither was it the godly picture of Christ and His Bride that it is intended to be. We are finding out as we talk to more and more couples that our marriage at that time was pretty much the norm, for Christians and non-Christians alike. The sad part is that our God wants so much more than that for us. Our marriage could have ended a statistic. Believers are divorcing at alarming rates and many of them are ending over the exact things that we struggled with. The more people we talk to, the more we realize that it is often the little things that end families. The lack of communication, the lack of understanding or compassion, the feelings of not being appreciated, the selfishness of wanting someone to relinquish his or her dreams for yours. God intended marriage to be so much more, but somehow we women have bought the lie that we "deserve" it all. Somehow we have lost our way. My heart is to tell you that if your marriage is like mine was -- not as bad as it could be, but not good either, there is hope for you. God's desire is that your marriage be amazing!! I can honestly tell you that now, mine is - and it is more wonderful that I could have ever dreamed it could be. I have embraced my role as a wife and a mother....it is what God created women to be. Don't buy the lie that says we should be professionals and that we can do that and be good wives and mothers - I've never met anyone who could do it all. Stan has embraced his role as the leader in our family, the provider, the picture of how Christ loves the Church. He has changed all of his priorities to match up with that calling. He is the man I have prayed for all of my life. Even before I knew that I needed that kind of man. I am more thankful to God than I can possibly express.