Watching God At Work

Thoughts on 20 Years of Marriage

I’ve been thinking about writing this for a while. This past February was our 20^th wedding anniversary. I’ve also had two younger siblings get married in the last year or so, and that made me think about what encouragement I would give to a young Christian couple just starting out. What would it have been good for me to hear at that point in my life?

My third reason for thinking these things through was a bit more negative. A friend “from away” came to visit and saw the things that are genuinely hard about my life. Seeing it through her eyes really challenged me to think about why I am happy in my marriage, despite those things.

Today we were sitting in the ER waiting room with our 18-month-old (something is wrong with his collarbone). We had been there for probably 5 hours. The baby was sleeping on Stephen, and I was sitting next to them. A lady was sitting near us, clutching an ice pack to her severely swollen face. Occasionally she rocked and moaned. Then she started to cry. I wanted to do something to help, but I could not make myself move --paralysis brought on by shyness and fear of rejection or embarrassment. Stephen handed me the sleeping baby and quietly brought her a box of tissues and sat next to her.

“I’m sorry I can’t take your pain away, but I can sit with you for a while.”

And he just sat there next to her. “It’s a hard day for you, isn’t it?”

When the tissue box was empty, he asked if he could get her another one.

A little later, if he could get anything else for her. The answer was no.

That was all. The nurses called her in, and we continued to wait.

Stephen is just as introverted as I am. That genuine kindness is the fruit of the Spirit working in him. The goodness, faithfulness, self-control that drives him to act when inclination and inertia would seem to prescribe sitting still and pretending not to see is the work of God.

This is what I would say to a young Christian couple who are following the Lord. Sanctification is real. The Holy Spirit is at work in you and in your spouse, and He will use every circumstance of your lives together, good and bad, to make you more like Jesus. Ideally, as you each grow closer to the Lord, you will grow closer to each other. Sin can get in the way, though. Ah, pray, pray, pray to see as He sees, to accept as He accepts, to love as He loves.

Because here’s the thing. Sanctification is not going to look the way you think it should look. Even if you are deeply in love, before long, you will see your spouse’s faults quite clearly. Your priorities for change in your spouse may not be God’s priorities for change. If you dig in and try to take control of the sanctification process, you will not only fail, but you will also fail to see how God is really working in ways you didn’t expect, and how beautiful that is.

Our married life has been in some ways a descent into chaos. As the years have passed, there have been increasingly more unfinished projects and piles of stuff everywhere, in every room of the house. I’m not exaggerating. This was and is hard. Even more difficult have been the unmet deadlines and the failed courses. None of these things matter to him the way they matter to me…to him, the stuff is merely physical, external. The failures are opportunities to get right back up and keep going…and he always does. I thought executive function would be God’s first order of business when it came to Stephen’s sanctification.

I now see that God is at work in him producing the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. These are the Spirit’s priorities. After 20 years, I have been able to see these things unmistakeably, growing in him. Wisdom too. Lack of executive function may very well be a permanent “thorn in the flesh” never resolved this side of glory. And this, good and bad, wonderful and hard, is meant to help sanctify me too.

There is a straight line from the moment I realized I was in love with Stephen and the scene in the waiting room today. I remember that he was praying for a mutual acquaintance, and I thought, “He really cares for that person’s soul.” And then I realized, “I want to marry him.” (At the time it was hopeless and unrequited, but God worked it all out in time.) The scene today came from the same place, but it is deeper now, more ingrained, more principled, more worked out in practice.

It's pure grace, nothing less, how God has allowed me to go through life with “my person”. I’ve told my hard here, but there are things about me that are just as hard for him. And yet we are both happy in our marriage. The hard stuff is real, and the grace of God is real too, keeping us.

If you keep looking to Him, his grace will keep you too.

And grace will lead us home.

 

Note: I wrote this several months ago, but at the time felt it was too personal to post and share. However, my husband has encouraged me more than once to share it anyway. I pray that it's a blessing for someone out there.

Thankful Thoughts at Ten Years

My husband and I celebrated our tenth anniversary last week. Well, it wasn't much of a celebration, since we have a newborn in the house and snowstorms every few days, but still. We thought of it and were glad.

(Since I didn't have a picture of us on our tenth anniversary, here's one of us on our first one. Aren't we cute?)

I've been thinking about what a blessing marriage to this man has been. The truth is, it has been beyond what I could ever have imagined before we were married. Don't get me wrong, we're not anywhere near perfect. We take each other for granted sometimes. Selfishness still creeps in too often. We're still not the greatest communicators (Two introverts...). Still, ten years later, I can say that I had no idea back then how good marriage would be. I thought it was good then, but it really has just gotten better for us.

I know this isn't true for everyone. Even Christian couples can have unhappy marriages, and even separate and divorce. I'm telling you how it is for us so you can be encouraged that happy marriages do happen. There is too much bad news about marriage around. (Though I've heard lately that the doom-and-gloom statistics may not actually be the true picture.)

What is it that makes a marriage happy? There is a lot of discussion in Christian circles about love and respect and about headship and submission. This is all very helpful, but I want to point out something even more basic that can sometimes be overlooked. I think that the way God calls all Christians to act towards one another in the Church applies to Christian marriage as well. This seems very basic, but it can take a lifetime to grow into living it out. Consider this:

"Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you." (Ephesians 4:32 ESV)

How happy would all Christian marriages be if just this one simple thing was taken to heart?

Or think about 1 Corinthians 13, read so often at weddings that you may not even pay attention to the words anymore:

"Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things."

I'd be the first to admit that I don't think about these things nearly often enough. And yet when I think about it, this is why we're happy. We're kind to each other. Most of the time. (Like I said, we're not perfect.) We are not often irritable or resentful towards each other. If we are, we tend to be forgiving. I'm not saying this to boast. To be honest, we are grateful for God's grace in that we have not had many great trials yet in these ten years. Living in peace has come fairly easily to us so far. And yet, I think we can trust God to help us continue in this even when hard times do come.

I am thankful for my husband.
It is good to go through life with someone I love, and to share life's experiences together.
It is happiness just to be in the same room, talking when we want to talk, being silent together when we want to be silent.
It is amazing joy to be parents together of four little boys.
I especially feel grateful for the confidence and trust he places in me. It's my favourite thing about being married, and I don't take it for granted.

There you have them. Thankful thoughts. I would love to hear from you what you're grateful for in your marriage. I didn't write this post so you could start comparing your marriage with mine (this happens way too often in the blogworld, doesn't it?), just to encourage you to think of the things you're grateful for as well.