Tag: Christian living

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Marriage

Showing Honor to Your Spouse

“I see London, I see France, I can see your underpants!” My aunt sang as I hid my three-year-old face into the couch after a temper tantrum. It seemed that the skirt of my dress had lifted up and my white underwear was exposed for all to see. I had brought dishonor on my parents, who had taken the time to dress me properly and who had taught me never to show my underpants to anyone in public.

The English word for “honor” connotes giving respect to those in authority over us. We honor our parents and grandparents. We honor our teachers. We honor our governing officials. We honor our bosses. However, how do we show honor to our spouses, who are supposed to be equal to us?

The Greek word that is used in 1 Corinthians 13:5 for “dishonor” (aschemonei) is translated as “acts unbecomingly.” Strong’s Greek Concordance uses the definition “to prepare disgrace for another,” while HELPS Word-Studies describes the Greek word for “dishonor” as “to lack proper form.” It turns out that my little reveal as a three-year-old was the perfect example of showing dishonor. I lacked the proper form of how a little girl should act. I was preparing disgrace for my parents as well as myself by exposing my little booty.

The only other time that this Greek word is used in Scripture is in 1 Corinthians 7, when Paul talks about an engagement relationship: “If anyone is worried that he might not be acting honorably toward the virgin he is engaged to, and if his passions are too strong and he feels he ought to marry, he should do as he wants. He is not sinning. They should get married” (v 36, NIV). The word has nothing to do with how the “other” is acting in this case; it only deals with the self. If you are not doing what you are supposed to do, you are showing dishonor. This thinking reveals that we should lay down our pride so that we can show honor to our spouses.

Practically, if you are not in a marriage relationship, but you are acting like you are (if you know what I mean), you are showing dishonor to your significant other. It is not a sin to get married, but it is a sin to act like you’re married when you aren’t. Everyone who has ever gotten married knows the pressure to have the biggest, most expensive wedding. However, there is no wedding more beautiful than a couple who puts all that glamour and glitz off the pedestal and focuses on showing honor to each other.

In February of 2016, my husband and I had to choose between waiting two years and waiting nine months to get married. We realized that if we kept waiting, we could have compromised, and we could have shown dishonor to one another by acting like we were married when we weren’t. We were married in November of 2016 with no regrets and with anticipation of starting our lives together.

If you are married, you can show honor to your spouse through the dictionary definition of showing honor, acting true to the form of a good spouse. Remember that the world is watching you, and they are looking for an example of what a God-centered marriage looks like. How are you going to show them that God is at the center of your marriage?

Honoring always involves looking up. Although our spouses are equal to us, we all have a standard to follow. God gives us a standard for how we should treat our spouses in Ephesians 5: women are to submit to their husbands, and men are to love their wives. That is how you show honor to your spouse.

Ultimately, when we honor others, we honor God. God will show us how to honor our spouses through His Word and through the work that He does in our hearts. If you have been acting dishonorably toward your spouse, the first step is to ask for forgiveness, both from your spouse and from God. If you trust God, He will show you how to bring honor to your spouse and how to be an example of a good marriage in a world that so desperately needs love.

Photo by Jamie Street on Unsplash

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Marriage

Pride: The Killer of Marriage

Pride is common, and is actually encouraged, in today’s society. Although the word “pride” has developed a connotation of its own, the pride that the Bible warns against involves making yourself look better than you actually are. Strong’s Greek Concordance translates the word for pride in 1 Corinthians 13:4 (physioutai) as “puffed up.” The phrase invokes the imagery of a balloon being inflated. On the outside, the balloon increases in size, pomp, and importance, but the inside is filled with nothing.

In marriage, pride can cause fights, arguments, and disagreement. Using the idea of pride that the Bible describes, spouses attempts to puff themselves up in competition against one another to prove why they are right. Since they are so busy pointing out their spouse’s big heads, they never see their own. Pride can never bring a couple together; it can only tear them further apart. That’s why pride is described as the marriage-killer.

This popular scenario that takes place in a marriage demonstrates how easy it is for pride to creep into your relationship. We all know that men do not listen. When women want to vent, men want to fix it. Men and women violently attack each other to prove that their side is the right side. They even call their friends together of the same gender and have an all-out battle of the sexes to defend their opinions. That in and of itself is pride, but there’s an even deeper root of pride that exists in this case.

Men have this innate desire to fix everything. Generally speaking, they have this tendency to think that they have the solution to every problem, and that if only women could see things like they do, the world would be a better place. When women are caught up in their feelings, men have to rescue them from their distorted thinking and help them see the right way (his way, of course!). Bad day at work? Husband knows how to fix it! Problems with your sister? Husband knows what to say! In every situation, the wife may say “It’s not as easy as you think,” but the husband will believe, “Of course it’s that easy! It works for me every time!”

On the other side, women have this innate desire to express their feelings. Generally speaking, they see their husbands after a long day of separation and feel the need to dump everything on them. It doesn’t matter if their husbands are tired, hungry, or need to poop. If the wife wants to talk, the husband needs to listen. Then, when the husband reacts according to his fatigue/hunger/needing to poop (AKA, says something stupid in response to this outpouring of the wife’s heart), the woman gets upset. “You didn’t talk to me like I deserve,” the wife might say. “Why can’t you talk to me like that hot guy talks to his wife in that sappy romantic movie I always make you watch?”

In Matthew 7, Jesus illustrates what pride looks like through the imagery of a piece of wood: “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye” (Matt. 7:3-5).

Like the person who Jesus describes in this parable, we tend to look at everyone else’s faults before dealing with our own. Wives, before you judge your husband for leaving his clothes on the floor, ask yourselves, “Do I put everything back in its place when I’m finished with it?” As you look around, you may find your make-up, books, or other items strewn around the house. Make sure you are clean before you criticize your husband for being dirty.

When we got married, my pastor gave my husband a wise bit of marriage advice: “These two phrases will save your marriage – ‘It’s my fault,’ and ‘I’m sorry.'” He specifically told that to my husband, but I’ve learned that I have to say it to my husband as well. When was the last time you took responsibility in your marriage? How often do you believe that it’s your spouse’s fault when something goes wrong? Make an effort to use these phrases more often. Ask God to help you see where you need work. If you cannot look past your own pride and only see the work your spouse needs, pray for your spouse. I know that, over time, God will open your eyes to see where you need work too!

Photo by Adam King on Unsplash

This article lists 10 ways that pride manifests in marriage. If you feel led, prayerfully read through this list and consider if these attributes are present in your marriage. Again, before you go complaining that your spouse is guilty of all these qualities, look in your own heart and pray about how you can change, too.

Categories
Marriage

What are You Fighting For?

Being married has been a source of healing from my past. Divorce, promiscuity, and affairs run rampant in our culture, but because of Jesus, we don’t have to live like that anymore. However, one of the silent killers of marriage, which we always have to guard against, is a little thing called gossip.

Call it what you may. Putting down your husband. Choosing sides and asking your relatives to do the same. Harboring bitterness. Venting. Seeking advice from people who delight in evil. Justifying your actions by bouncing your ideas off of someone else.

Or, my personal favorite, just joking around.

I’m convinced that while gossip does not cause divorce, it definitely doesn’t help a marriage stay together. One piece of advice I’ve heard from a lot of people is not to share your problems with your parents. Your parents will always be on your side, not your marriage’s side, so you will always win when you ask them to nurse your wound. But the point of marriage is not to win; the point of marriage is to stay married until death do us part.

Right before I got married, my mom told it to me straight: “If you ever get so mad at your husband that you don’t want to go home, don’t come here. We’ll just send you back home to your husband so you can be reconciled.” Her advice not only showed her support of my marriage, but it also put the responsibility on me and not on her to fix my marriage.

Of course, during the honeymoon stage I didn’t think I could ever be so mad at my husband that I would want to spend time apart from him. However, through the stresses of life and the arguments that make my blood boil, it has been tempting to pick up the phone and call my mom. Just to vent. Just to justify if I’m right. Just to bounce my ideas off of someone who cares. But I can’t sugarcoat it. Gossip is gossip, and I should never put down my husband when I’m talking about him to others.

This message is for two people. First, to spouses: do not develop the habit of going to your parents or other family members to bail you out of your marital problems. If they want to offer you advice, that’s wonderful! Definitely take it, especially if they have a healthy marriage that you want to exemplify in your own marriage. However, don’t go out of your way to put down your husband so that you could prove you’re right, because when you do that, you both lose

Second, family members, parents, or close friends: Do not stick your nose in your loved ones’ marriage. If you want to give advice, it is the responsibility of the receiver to put that advice into practice. Don’t force them to conform to your way. If they come to you for advice and end up putting their spouse down, try to say things to encourage your family member to love his or her spouse again. I don’t care if it’s your son or daughter, your sister or brother, your niece or nephew, your cousin, or a close friend; if you attended their wedding, you made a promise to help them when they are struggling.

I know from experience that it hurts to see a family member fighting with his or her spouse or significant other. I personally want to stick up for my own flesh and blood. However, if the couple is married, that means they made a promise to God to honor one another and to maintain their union to one another in Christ. Help them keep their commitment, instead of telling them to give up on their marriage.

Photo by John Pearson on Unsplash

Categories
Wisdom Wednesday

When Fresh Water Looks Familiar

We just set up a television in our office to display a calm waterfall scene.  So far, the scene has managed to distract me from getting work done because it is so relaxing!  My eyes are drawn to the water spewing out of the waterfall.  How does the water look so fresh every time, but the water is never replaced by an outside force (well, obviously, besides rain in real life, but in this picture, there is no sight of rain anywhere).

I feel like the word of God is accurately portrayed in the vision of a waterfall.

I’ve heard people ask for a fresh word from the Lord.  We want to hear something new from God, not something that we’ve heard before.  We’ve been following His direction about an issue for several months, and we need something new to follow.

Isn’t that so much like our culture, to always expect the new and unfamiliar?

Come on, God!  Let’s get on with it.

God really challenged my belief when I was brought to read Psalm 23.  Let me tell you, if I could get a Masters in a verse or passage in the Bible, it would either be Philippians 4:6-7 (thank you, anxiety) or Psalm 23.  I had to memorize Psalm 23 for one of my classes in my undergrad.  I had done a Bible study on Psalm 23.  I heard a speaker talk about Psalm 23 during another one of my Bible studies.  I had studied sheep and shepherds and understand the importance of the sheep and the shepherds.  I studied each and every word out of the study.  I analyzed every, single, verse.  I sucked the verse dry, as if it were a hose with a limited amount of water.

So, why was God leading me back to read it again?  Didn’t I already graduate from Psalm 23?  Where was my fresh word?  Where was God going to meet me?

I read the chapter, and nothing in particular stuck out to me.

But that is exactly what I learned.

See, I approach God with what I want Him to teach me.  I approach God expecting Him to speak to me, expecting a fresh word, expecting His Word to bend and mold so that I could be satisfied with new information.  But I realized that God isn’t going to change His Word for me.  He isn’t going to feed me new food when He has already provided me my daily bread.

When the Israelites wandered through the desert, they got sick of the manna that the Lord was miraculously providing them daily.  The LORD was literally making bread fall from Heaven, and the Israelites were mad that they had to have manna again.  They were getting sick of it.  They were so numb to the miracles of God that they had forgotten that their provision truly was a miracle.

Instead of expecting a fresh word from the LORD, I should be grateful every time I approach God’s Word because God speaks to me through His Word.  Even if He keeps repeating “I love you” or “I will provide what you need,” God is speaking to me.  Psalm 23 may be a familiar word, but the word will always be true.  No matter if I’m about to walk into a difficult season, if I’m walking through a difficult season, or I just came out of a difficult season.  I’ve learned through time that the LORD is my shepherd.  Even though I can believe that now, there have been times in my life where I’ve really had to trust God to provide financially or emotionally, and I’ve seen Him provide money for me when I need it, as well as peace when I was going through a panic attack.

In that moment I was getting a reminder of the times that God had revealed Himself to me as shepherd, and has taken me through the hard times.  If I was expecting a fresh word, I would have missed the wonderful lesson that God wanted to show me.  When we approach God’s Word, let’s not be expectant of a fresh word.  Let’s be humble, teachable, and let God speak to us through His Word.

Photo by Robert Lukeman on Unsplash

Categories
Marriage

Finding Financial Freedom as a Couple

This post is a unique one because my husband helped me write it.  Go, team!

My husband and I are excited to say that we are 100% debt-free.  In our first year of marriage, we paid off my student loans (about $20K by the time we got married), his car loan ($21K with 0% interest), and a few dollars we owed my sister!  We are now in the process of saving money toward our emergency fund, and after that, we will start putting money toward a down payment for a house.

As many Christian couples that have gone before us, we have learned a lot from the teachings of Dave Ramsey, as well as from Christians around us who are good at budgeting.  We are thankful for their wisdom, and ultimately, for the wisdom that God has provided for us during our newlywed stage.

Here are some quick tips that have helped us to find financial freedom as a couple:

  • Evaluate your priorities. As a couple, we’ve had to make some hard decisions together about our spending.  Do we use our wedding money to pay off student loans, or to buy a house?  Do we save for a house, or do we go on vacation?  Wherever we choose to spend our money demonstrates our priorities.  Even while looking for jobs, we’ve had to ask ourselves: would we rather be making six figures, or would we rather be together as a family?  Unfortunately, the world does not promise us both.  We often have to pick between long hours of overtime and spending quality time with our loved ones.  We’ve clearly chosen the latter; we’ve both decided that we never want work to come before our marriage, even if that means making less money.
  • Tithe.  Along with priorities, in our marriage, our priority is to give glory to God and to serve Him above anyone else.  We have chosen to love God first, then each other, and then our family, and then everyone else.  That pattern of love is the way we make every decision, including with our finances.  We honor God by giving Him the first-fruits of our income, not the last bits of crumbs, if there’s even any left!  We have seen God bless our marriage and bless our finances through our decision to honor Him with the money that He has given us.
  • Make a budget.  Sit down together and make a budget that works for both of you.  One thing we’ve learned from Dave Ramsey is to assign every dollar that you make to an item on your budget.  The money shouldn’t just sit in your bank account.  It should have a purpose, and you and your spouse should have control over it.
  • Stick to the plan: This is the point that my husband wanted to add.  If you don’t stick to the plan, then you’ll just get right back into debt.  Plain and simple.  These are the wise words from my husband!
  • Have open communication: Today, I got a check for $10.  Ten.  Dollars.  That’s it.  But I still sent a message to my husband to let him know about it and to let him know what I was going to do with it.  Part of sticking to the plan is to talk about what money is spent, what money is taken in, and what money is being saved.  We can talk about what is working in our budget and what needs to be adjusted.  We don’t hide any money from each other, and we don’t make any major purchases without talking about them.
  • Make it fun: My husband and I have truly enjoyed saving our pennies together.  We have found fun and creative ways to save money each day.  In the beginning of our marriage, we would go out to eat in order to have fun.  Just yesterday, our date night involved learning how to play the guitar together by watching videos on YouTube (for free!).  When we went out to eat on Friday, we tried to see what little things we could change to our meal to lower the cost; we ended up sharing a drink and the fries.  It can be fun coming home after a day together and still having money in our pockets.

I am thankful to God that my husband and I are a team.  Since we do everything together, we are able to celebrate our personal victories together.  That includes becoming debt-free and saving money toward bigger things.

Make the decision today to trust God with your finances and to work toward your financial goals as a team with your spouse.

Photo by Jonathan Brinkhorst on Unsplash

Categories
Marriage

Why the First Year is the Hardest

For eleven months, my husband would ask me if we could eat our anniversary cake.  “No!”  I protested.  My play-it-by-the-rules attitude insisted that we must eat our anniversary cake on our anniversary.  That’s what made it special, right?

On the drive home from our anniversary trip last week, we were so excited to finally be able to eat our anniversary cake.  My husband joked that they gave us the wrong cake, or that the box was empty, but we both hoped that none of those were true.  For most of our months of marriage, we’ve heard several horror stories of in-laws eating the wedding cake while the bride and groom were on their honeymoon.  We were thankful that was not our story!

I began to realize that this was the last tangible piece of our wedding that we could grasp together.  My dress is collecting dust in the closet.  My husband returned his tux.  The rest of the food had already decomposed in the trash (sorry for that graphic!).  Even the honeymoon was a distant memory.  This cake was the last tangible piece of the wedding that we can experience.

The last time we had this cake, we were madly in love.  We ate the strawberry and buttercream without a single clue of what it would be like to spend the rest of our lives together.  We had no idea what we were in for in the years to come.

This time, the cake tasted even sweeter, because we were able to eat it on the other side of the spectrum.  We were able to eat the cake knowing that we were much closer, much stronger, and much more in love than we were the last time we ate it.

The lovely people who offer us unsolicited advice warned us that the first year of marriage is always the hardest.  Some have even gone as far to say that the first year of marriage will either make or break your relationship.  Hearing advice like this left me a little fearful of what the first twelve months of our journey together would hold.  I wondered if every fight, every disagreement, every time I didn’t get my way, would make or break us.

Since my husband and I fought on the same side, we knew each conflict would only bring us closer together.

We’ve learned together that the first year of marriage is the hardest because it is the first year where we have to surrender.  The rest of our marriage will continue to be surrender, but after surrendering our holiday traditions that were so familiar to us, after surrendering our own personal ways of budgeting, and after surrendering how we spend our quality time, we now have a rhythm for the rest of our lives together.

We know that surrender is still going to feel uncomfortable.  We know that surrender is not always going to be cut and dry.  We know that surrender is going to involve compromise from both of us.  But since we’ve already surrendered to one another for a year, we know that we can continue to surrender daily for as long as we both shall live.

Biblically, this type of surrender is called submission.  Ephesians 5:21 calls us to submit ourselves to one another.  The marriage relationship is no different.  We need to submit ourselves (our hopes, dreams, traditions, and beliefs) to one another in order to become one.  Surrender helps us to connect.

Our society does not like surrender.  Society teaches that we need to fight for our rights, to fight for our way, to never give up until we win.  Surrender, however, is messy.  Surrender tells us to fit a square peg in a round hole.  But surrender causes us to give up our comfort for the sake of true satisfaction and true contentment.

I wanted to write a blog post about my wedding cake because I was amazed that it tasted so good.  People had told us that the wedding cake usually tastes horrible by the first year.  (But hey, here’s a shameless plug for those planning their wedding: strawberry apparently freezes really well!)  I was so excited to be able to prove them wrong.  I was so excited to share that our cake tasted just as delicious as it did one year ago.  I was so excited to share what this cake symbolized: that we defied the odds of our society, that we defied the negative “advice” that we received, and that we not only survived our first year of marriage, but we thrived.

Are you thriving in your marriage?  Maybe it’s time to surrender your expectations of the perfect marriage, your holiday traditions, your budget, and your time.  But since I’ve been getting a lot of unsolicited advice since marriage, I’m going to offer you some: surrendering to your spouse is so much easier when you’re already fully surrendered to God.  Jesus surrendered His life so that we could have a relationship with God.  He calls us to give up our lives in return.  Our surrender to our spouse is just a small reflection of our surrender to Christ.  Ultimately, we must give God control of our lives and let Him remove the roughness of our edges so that we could connect deeply with our spouses.

This is an actual picture of a tier of our wedding cake.  It tasted better than it looked!

Categories
Books

Just Mercy: A Book that Made Me Cry, Ponder, and Cry Some More

As much as I love reading, it takes a lot for a book to make me cry.  Usually I cry at movies because the screen is right in front of me.  But a book has to be written in such a way that I can literally imagine myself standing in the same room as the one being hurt, and feel bad for him/her.

Bryan Stevenson’s book Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption was written in that exact way.

This book was another read recommended by the Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit.  The book was so well-written that I literally read it cover to cover.  I even read the Acknowledgements!

While reading the book, I thought that I was reading a fiction novel.  The book was written in a descriptive narrative that appeared to be omniscient perspective.  Stevenson had been able to perfectly replicate the feelings, thoughts, and actions, and motives of all the people who he highlighted in his book, just like a novelist would.

But that wasn’t the only reason why it felt like a fiction novel.

The book summary highlights the story of Walter McMillan, a man who was put on death row, having been wrongly accused of murdering Ronda Morrison of Monroeville, Alabama.  However, Stevenson also includes the stories of other cases that he had helped, especially children who had been sentenced to life without parole for non-homicidal actions.  McMillan’s story, as well as the others, exposed the racial injustice in the judicial system that Stevenson’s agency, Equal Justice Initiative, fights to correct.  The injustice that I read in the book was so terrible that I had wished throughout the entire book that it was a fiction novel.  I couldn’t believe that this was true, that these events had actually happened in our country.

The book is a timely novel in that there is currently debate over whether racism still exists today. For such a touchy subject as racism, Stevenson does a brilliant job of appearing unbiased toward the criminals as well as toward the victims.  Since the book was written in 2014, and the trials that he discusses took place between 1980 and 2010, it seems that Stevenson wants to continue the conversation of racial injustice in the judicial system so that it does not continue.  History has a habit of repeating itself.  If we forget about the mistakes of our ancestors, we run the risk of making the same mistakes.

While I was reading the book, my husband noted how often I would gasp.  I didn’t even realize I was doing it.  My gasps were in response to the incredulous actions of the court.  There were situations where they disposed of evidence in favor of the defendant, they forbade people of color to enter the courtroom, and they even sentenced the defendants to life without parole without any credible evidence that they committed the crime.  For the most part, the court just wanted to blame someone.

My gasps were also in response to the terrible lives that these criminals had to endure.  Stevenson writes in detail what it actually looks like for people to be executed in the electric chair.  I cried right along with them as the flesh was burning off of their skin.  One little boy was so small that the headpiece of the chair fell off his head when they did the first shock.  Stevenson also shares their backstories.  Some kids had watched their mothers get sexually and physically abused right before their eyes.  Some kids were good kids, but they hung around the wrong crowd.  Some had mental illnesses.

What Stevenson portrays in his book is that these people are, well, people.  They are people created in the image of God who have been tainted by sin, who have been broken by the world.  Just like all of us.  Maybe killing the broken people of this world isn’t the best way to make the world right.

To present a critical analysis of this book, I must point out a message that may not be clear to every reader: the fact that these criminals have terrible backstories does not excuse their behavior.  These stories may explain their behavior, but they do not excuse their behavior.  If a rape victim murders somebody because she feels paranoid that everyone is out to get her, it’s sad that she feels that way, but it does not make the fact that she murdered someone okay.  These kids did commit acts of violence that were completely and totally wrong.  What I think Stevenson is trying to argue, however, is that there should be a different way of dealing with these situations, such as through counseling or other correctional programs.  Simply killing someone (or letting someone rot in jail) who made a mistake does not fix their behavior.

For more information about Bryan Stevenson’s work with the Equal Justice Initiative, visit his website (click here).  The work that EJI continues to do demonstrates that the issues in this book are not completely resolved.  Pray about the part that you will play in promoting justice and mercy in our society.

Categories
Marriage

I Left My Lung in NY

The bags were all packed.  The three of us were ready to make our trek to the conference.

Having driven to the North Shore of Long Island, taken a ferry across the Long Island Sound, and driven another hour, we finally arrived at our retreat center in Connecticut, over 100 miles from home.  Feeling welcome right away, I met some wonderful women who were genuinely happy that I was there even though they didn’t know me.  I wish I’d been able to talk to them, but the three of us (me and the two women I drove with) were so tired from the long trek that we politely excused ourselves to go to bed.

I found my way to Room 217. I opened the door to my room and saw a private bed with a small wooden desk and an open window covered by cream-colored curtains.  It was cozy, but it was unfamiliar.

Thrusting my bag off my shoulder, I had realized at that moment that I’d forgotten something very important.

I’d forgotten my husband.

My husband and I knew that I would be attending reNEW retreat (a retreat for New England Writing) and that it would be a great way for me to invest in my writing and get a sense of direction on where God was leading me.  He has given me this gift of writing, and I wanted to share it with the world.  This retreat, we were certain, would help me with that.  But this would be the first time in our eleven months of marriage that we would be apart for more than a day.  Separation for four days required a lot of trust and prayer from both of us.

Standing in that small monastery room, my head started to spin as the walls shrunk around me.  It felt as if my lung had been ripped out of my chest and I was forced to breathe with just one lung, double the effort but half the results.  Tears flooded from my eyes.  I covered my mouth, conscientiously preventing my sobs from echoing through the paper-thin walls.  I wasn’t even there ten minutes, and I already wanted to go home.

I knew I was right where I needed to be.  But knowing that didn’t make leaving my husband any easier.

Tears streaming down my face, I remembered the blog post that I had written about how it’s healthy to get some space from your spouse every once in a while.  It’s amazing that God used my own writing to encourage me.  Glory to God!

My husband and I prayed for each other over the phone before I went to bed.  What God led him to pray was exactly what I needed to hear, and exactly how we were able to survive being apart: “Even though we are physically separated, remind us Lord that we are always emotionally and spiritually connected.”  Sniffling the residual tears away with a smile on my face, I hung up the phone and peacefully fell asleep.

As a follower of Christ, I believe that my husband and I are joined together as one flesh by God.  In Matthew 19:6, Jesus tells His disciples: “What God has joined together, let no man separate.”  No matter how much physical distance is between us, our hearts will always be knit together by the love that we have confessed to one another in the sight of God.

In retrospect, I had an incredibly wonderful time at the retreat.  While going for a walk on my own, I started processing my third rewrite of the novel I’ve been working on for several years, finally developing a story line and a back story for each of my characters.  Since I had my own room and desk, I was able to write 50 pages of my novel in the ample amount of free time I was given.  During workshops and at meals, I connected with other women who shared my passion and encouraged me instead of competed with me.  And during the whole retreat, I learned to fully rely on God and trust His timing, especially when my circumstances did not correlate with my desires.  My husband also used his time away from me wisely by catching up with his friends from childhood.  Overall, we survived, and our time apart just made us remember not to take our time together for granted.

It may be difficult to breathe with just one of my lungs, but I can still survive.  And so can he.

Categories
Wisdom Wednesday

Let’s Be Honest

I walk through the church atrium, greeted by many smiling faces.  “How are you?” they ask me, already knowing my answer.  “I’m good, how are you?”  Their smiles grow wider when they act exactly the way that they expect.  “Good!” they reply enthusiastically.

Little do they know that I’m not really “good.”  The truth is: I’m hurting inside, but I don’t want to talk about it.  I’d rather stuff it deeper and hide behind a polite smile.  I lift my hands in worship, putting on a show rather than truly surrendering to God, fearing that if I didn’t lift my hands, someone would ask me what was wrong.  The pastor leads us in prayer at the end of the service, but all I want to do is go home.

Sadly, I lived for too long under the mask of false positivity and rehearsed answers.  Sadly, people I love have lived the same way.  Sadly, the world makes it nearly impossible to be honest with others, with ourselves, and with God.

I believe that a huge portion of my anxiety was a result of hiding my feelings and being dishonest with those around me.  I would walk through life as if I was carrying a big package and I could never put it down.  It was difficult to breathe under the weight of my hurt.

Someone recently asked me if it was normal to be upset at God.  Learning to be honest with God was so liberating.  For most of my life, I believed that emotions were bad.  I believed that I should avoid emotions at all cost and just focus on the positive.  After all, the Bible says to give thanks in all circumstances.  Doesn’t that mean it’s a sin not to be thankful at any given moment?  But after meeting some great accountability partners in college, I learned that the Bible had a lot to say about being honest with our emotions!

Yes, it is normal to be upset with God.  Think about it.  God is sovereign over everything.  He can easily stop whatever is going on that is causing you pain or frustrating you.  He can easily heal me from my anxiety.  He can easily make the cars part on the parkway so that I have no traffic on the way home.  But for some reason that we don’t understand, He’s not stopping the pain or the confusion.

The beautiful thing about honesty is that it shows God your heart. I believe that God would rather have an honest worshiper who was angry than a fake worshiper who was happy. Psalm 51:17 says that God will not despise a broken and contrite spirit.

The Psalms are filled with honest prayers to God that make you wonder “Should those really be in the Bible?” As a matter of fact, David prays that his enemies’ babies would be dashed against the rocks (see Psalm 137). That’s obviously really extreme, but it shows how much anger was in David’s prayers. He was angry that his enemies had taken Israel into captivity; he was removed from his homeland and all he wanted to do was go back.

I sometimes drive home from work and simply ask God “Why?”  Why do I have to sit in this traffic?  Why do I still have anxiety?  Why is life so difficult?  The world calls this complaining, but I call it honesty.  The key to being honest with God about our emotions is that we must not stop there.  The Psalms never ended on a bad note and neither should we.  David would pour out his anger, sadness, and anxiety to God…but then he would declare his complete trust to God.

“God, I’m sad.  I’m angry.  Why is this happening?  Although I don’t understand what You’re doing, I trust that You will work all of this out for good, and You will never leave me or forsake me because You love me.”

I don’t know how long this season of questioning will last for you.  I don’t know what God has for you in the next season. All I know is that when you are honest with God, and you surrender your hurt, confusion, or anger to Him, you will grow closer to Him. It may be a daily surrender instead of a one-and-done deal. You may go to bed one day and surrender your hurts to Him, and wake up the next morning and still have the hurt. Keep surrendering, and then remind yourself of the hope you have in Christ.

 

Photo by Geetanjal Khanna on Unsplash

Categories
Marriage

What You Say When You Attend a Wedding

This past Saturday, someone very special got married: my mom!  I had the privilege of walking my mom down the aisle with my sister, as well as helping her get ready, praying with her before the ceremony, and answering the wedding coordinator’s questions.  I also had the chance to meet my new step siblings and nephew and make a connection with them.  It was so exciting to be a part of my mom’s special day, and I’m so happy for the future that God has for her and my new stepdad.

Let me be clear with you: I didn’t do these things to help my mom simply because I was her daughter.  It wasn’t simply my responsibility to help her because she helped me on my wedding day.  No one forced me to be there for her and pray for her.  Rather, I helped her because I wanted to make it known that I support her in her marriage and that I will continue to remind her of her commitment to her husband.

As a culture, we seem to have forgotten the importance of a wedding.  The wedding is not about the free food.  The wedding is not about busting out your favorite dance moves or making a conga line.  The wedding is not about having your way and criticizing everything you don’t like.  The wedding is not about getting black-out drunk and doing stupid things that you’ll probably regret in the morning.  Even if the wedding does have free food, fun dancing, and alcohol (and possibly things you don’t like), those things aren’t the point of the wedding.

On the contrary, the wedding is actually about a man and a woman making a decision before God and before those they love to honor one another and be faithful to one another.  As an attendee of the wedding, your job is to stand as witness of their testimony and to hold them accountable in their decision.

What does that actually look like when the honeymoon is over and everyone has eaten their cookie favor?

As all couples know who have been married for longer than a day, conflict and fights are going to happen in your marriage.  Unfortunately, the common thing for loved ones to do is to take your side in the argument.  If you attended my wedding, for example, and I came to you and told you that my husband made me cry because of some trivial argument, you should not tell me, “Wow, what a jerk!  I knew you shouldn’t have married him.”  Instead, your job is to encourage reconciliation between me and my husband; take our side in the argument.  You should gently remind me of the covenant I made with God and my husband to be faithful to him and to always work for our marriage.  Pray for us.  Ask God to give us wisdom.  And send me on my merry way back to my husband.

Next week, I’ll be going to my fourth wedding of the year, my husband’s cousin.  Although I’m looking forward to seeing my family and to having a great time at the party, I will be listening to their vows during the ceremony and will be praying for their success in marriage.  My husband and I will write a prayer in the card so that they can remember that we are asking God to intervene in their union, in the good times and the bad.  We also did that at the three weddings we already attended this year, and we will do so at the weddings we will be attending in the near future.

Let me encourage you: if you cannot do this for a couple who invited you to their wedding, do not attend the wedding.  It is better for you not to go than for you to show up with negativity, criticism, and/or an unwillingness to want to see them succeed in their marriage.  If you are a Christian and do not believe that God is in favor of their marriage, refusing to attend the wedding may encourage the couple to examine their hearts and invite God into their union.

When you go to a wedding, stand with the couple making their vows, and pray that God would be faithful to help them keep their vows from this day forward.

Photo by Tom The Photographer on Unsplash