Marriage - Part II

Can you believe that I am writing two posts in one day!? Well, I may not write another one for a month, so while I have the time....and while I am "pensive" I thought I would attack this topic of marriage again. I promised you that I would tell you how Stan and I found our "sweet spot." I think that Max Lucado coined that phrase, not about marriage, but about life in general - but, it seems to fit, so I am just "borrowing" it.

I am sure that I can not get it all in one post, and you would give up long before you finished reading it, if I did - so I will start at the beginning and work my way up to the present....slowly, I promise.

Hebrews 13:4 says "Marriage is to be held in honor among all and the marriage bed is to be undefiled, for fornicators and adulturers, God will judge."

Wow. That is pretty plain. Unfortunately, what we see all around us is evidence that this is not happening. "Marriage is to be held in honor among all" - yet, marriage is a joke among the movie stars and other "role models" of our age. If they bother to marry at all, they trade spouses every few years. The definition of marriage is a huge debate in political circles, with both parties filling in the blanks with whatever they want to make it. That is the "secular" world you might argue. No, the "church" is not doing any better. Our rate of divorce is just as high as the world's and our children are suffering for it at the same rate! Focus on the Family has a sub-board called troubledwith.com and on this board you can find statistics on divorce and how it affects children, physical and mental health, etc.... I think some of the statistics may surprise you!

Anyway, let me tell you a little about our marriage. One really hot day in September of 1995, I woke up after dozing off when my little ones were down for a nap. I rubbed my head and remember clearly thinking, "where am I and what am I doing here?" It was my first month living in Southwest Florida and I seriously thought something was wrong with me. It was so unbelievabley HOT!! My boy/girl twins were 20 months old, Stan and I had moved 754 miles away from my family and the only home I had ever known and now he had a job where he traveled 3 or 4 days a week. Every week! Not sometimes, but every single Tuesday morning he left at the crack of dawn and returned either past midnight on Thursday or sometime during the day on Friday. I was 22 years old, the spoiled and selfish oldest daughter of a family who doted on their two children. I had married this man, 9 years older than me who had taken a job with a small hospital management company and agreed to "some traveling." Well, one month after our move, when I realized that "some traveling" meant extensive traveling and that this was not going to change in the forseeable future, you can imagine that I was not a happy camper. (That is the understatement of the year!) Let me finish my "pity party" by telling you that we lived in a two bedroom condo unit with no neighbors under the age of 75 - and we had one car! Now, in case you can't picture the problem with this -- I had NO friends and I had to drive Stan to the airport in the wee morning hours on Tuesdays and pick him up in the dead of night on Thursdays - assuming he made it home on Thursday at all! Remember that I am not driving alone to the airport, oh no, we have TWO toddlers!!! I won't give you anymore gory details about how they responded to being dragged out of bed in the middle of the night and plopped in a car seat for an hour round trip ride to the airport!

Ok, so as you can see things are not shaping up too good in Paradise! Soon, in my search for adult conversation, I found myself firmly planted in a few Bible studies around town. I grew up in church and I knew the language and I knew that "church" people were the type of people I wanted to be around. My walk with the Lord was severely lacking, but I knew enough to know that I was a "good" girl and I could find other "good" people, down at the Baptist church! Well, soon enough God had decided that He was not going to let me off the hook as easily as I had managed to wiggle off in the past. Being a "good" girl was not going to cut it any longer! He began to place all sorts of people in my life who really gave me a shock. I met women who wanted to join hands and pray while we were having a playgroup at the park - and we weren't even eating anything! I met women who talked about Jesus like He was their very best friend in the world and included Him in our conversations like He might be waiting for a turn on the swing! I met people who began conversations with the words, "What is the Lord doing in your life right now?" My response, was usually, wide-eyed panic! "Ummm, well, we said "God is great, God is good before we ate all three meals yesterday, and we didn't forget once and we are going to church tonight." Bless their hearts, these ladies were so patient with me!

Soon, I began to feel the pull of the "hound of Heaven." God wanted me and He wanted all of me, not the "good" girl who teaches her children to chant prayers and who checks church attendance off the list at the end of the week. He wanted my whole life, every secret part of it and nothing less. I wish I could tell you that I responded immediately to the pull, repented of my sinful ways and lived happily ever after, but alas....life is not a fairy tale, is it? It was not that easy. It was real, hard, dirty work - and I am far from finished, but every dirty little part of my heart that has been ripped out and repaired and polished by the Master was worth it. I would go through everything again to realize what I now know to be true. There is NOTHING in this world that matters apart from my relationship with Him. There is NOTHING that I want to hold back from Him. I am NOTHING without Him and I now I would never dare claim to be able to draw breath on my own. He is everything to me!

I know that wasn't much on marriage, but hopefully it set the stage for you to see how absolutely miserable we were when we did not have our marriage on a firm foundation. I hope you see that even though someone may be "in" the church, it does not guarantee that they are "in Christ." We were not walking with Him and as I continue in this series on marriage, you will see that we were paying dearly for it.

I pray that you would check your marriage heartbeat. Is your marriage built on a firm foundation? There is only one Rock strong enough to hold.