God's Word For Marriage

Join me at Faith Deployed today to read my post on God's words of encouragement for marriage. 

Melancholy

Today I find myself in quite a pitiful state. Not completely happy and not completely sad but some strange place in between.

Prim started her first day of preschool today. Yes, she began last year but it was only two days a week and this year she will be gone four days a week. As I watched her go into her new class, after just yesterday waving goodbye to G as he began his second grade year, I lamented over how quickly it has all gone.  Time is quickly passing me by and I fear that I haven't captured it enough, remembered enough.  I worry that the little things that make having a child so precious are going to be forgotten.

My expectations have had to shift since May. You see, at this point I hoped to be pregnant, just in the beginning stages of showing off a baby bump.  How it hurts my heart that I do not have this small gift to carry along with me.  I didn't think it would hurt this much but in the quiet of my own mind today I found myself longing for what seems to be missing.

Is it supposed to feel like we're always saying goodbye? Goodbye to expectations, goodbye to our children as they grow a year older, goodbye to a season that we thought would outlast our dreams.  I ask God so often why, why, why that I wonder if He's still listening. But maybe it's me who's not hearing.  I read His Word that says:

In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith-of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire-may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.  1 Peter 6-7

and not only do I think of my own trials; this deployment, infertility and a small brood growing older by the minute, but I think of the people that I see around me who are suffering and I feel overwhelmed.  A friend of mine often posts on Facebook about about a family who just lost their daughter to an aggressive form of brain cancer. She was five. She was alive one day and the next she was gone, resting in the arms of Jesus.  Or I read Mary Beth Chapman's new book about losing her daughter, Maria, and I think to myself, is this what perspective looks like? How can I possibly feel this way with what they have suffered through?

Maybe it would seem easier if H were home.  Him being gone only magnifies the loneliness and I know that he would stand next to me and say "they're getting so big, where did the time go?"... And then I think of him being seven thousand miles away and not being able to kiss them goodbye on their first day of school or hug them when he gets home. Again-perspective.   

I know tomorrow will be a new day and the goodbyes won't feel quite so difficult. And maybe in November, when there is a welcome hello they won't seem so harsh to begin with.  But for now, I pray that I will be proven faithful and that He always be in it...

Far Away From Here

Do you ever get a deep yearning to just be... away?  For quite some time I have settled into the same daydream.  A little house, lots of open space and the sound of the kids laughing.  In my daydream my belly is swollen with pregnancy and H is beside me on a creaking porch swing.  It is quiet in all of the right ways.  Nature makes it's noises and we spend our evenings quietly enjoying what God has made.

I think I may be entering a new season in my life.  I crave simple.  I long for quiet.  I think much of it has to do with H being gone.  I am starting to realize that I have spent too much of my marriage apart from my husband.  I want to know what it is to be with him, not without.  The kids are growing so fast-I can't seem to remember little things about them when they were babies.  The other day I wrangled with the cloudy memory of when G took his first steps and I hated that I couldn't remember clearly that precious moment. 

Prim came home at twenty one months and just recently I realized how small she was.  I feel like I missed so much of her toddler time because it was so deeply emotional and exhausting for us all.  I wish for her that I had been able to carry her as an infant.  As an adoptive mom I feel like I missed so much-that I should have had the joy of her first tooth and her first steps. 

Maybe what I need is to feel shut away for a while with all of us together again.  The time is slipping, slipping away so quickly and soon they will be stretching their wings to find their own way. 

Striving for Perfection: A Lesson in Futility Part III

Thanks for hanging in there with me.  As I wrap up this last post on perfection I would like to say a few things before jumping in. 

I am highlighting the difficult because there is a stigma.  A pink elephant, self imposed stigma on marriage.  Especially Christian marriages.  We have all been, at some point, afraid that someone is going to play the un-Christian card against us.  We smile in church and show up looking shampooed and put together so that the world sees our very, very Godly best.  They will not see that we argued on the way to church about something petty and insignificant.  They don't want to know that hubby slept on the couch last night because he may have indirectly inferred that we exercise.  For our health.  It's not important to mention that there have been nights when we slept on tear stained pillows, praying for morning and a fresh start.

Case in point.  Who can forget the Gosselins?  No really.  Who can forget them because they're everywhere and they won't go away.  Their show Jon & Kate Plus 8 was a huge hit.  Why did people watch?  Because this self professed Christian couple ripped on each other at every turn.  Didn't it make us feel soooo much better about our own marriages?   Didn't many of us say-from our very high horse- I. would. never!

I don't know how many times I read online the accusation that they couldn't possibly be Christians.  Uh-Uh.  No way, no how the Lord was in that house.  Judge, judge, judge.  A Christian woman would never berate her husband that way, her husband never sell out her insecurities and OCD tendencies on national television, especially in front of their precious children.

Really?

This isn't about Jon & Kate but it is about the ugliness that can hide and fester, oozing into our marriages like cancer.  If memory serves me correctly I have been demanding, demeaning, self serving and selfish within the confines of my marriage.  I have been angry, disgusted and antagonizing all towards the one person I promised to respect and cherish for the rest of my life.  And I am a Christian woman.

I have learned the hard way that life is not what I imagined it would be.  That has meant that it has been both difficult and immeasurably sweet.  Humbling and ethereal.  I have had more fun, cried more tears and laughed harder than I ever thought I would on this journey called life.

My problem with perfection was not with H but with myself.  H being perfect meant that I could ride on his coat tails and share the light that reflected from his golden halo.  I could bask in the ease of his perfectness and not have to do the hard work.

I know.  It sounds almost ridiculous but at the time I thought I had it pretty much right and pretty much altogether.  Recognizing and accepting everything about him meant changing some things about me, especially those little bitty expectations that kept bobbing about in my self serving ocean.   It meant really seeing him for the man God made him to be, not the man I thought I deserved-who should have been, in a word-perfect.

A long time ago God saw to it that I marry a man who would and never could be perfect.  Because if he was than I would not have turned to God in my moments of weakness.  I would not have learned to die to myself and be reborn under the blood of the only perfect Man.  We could never have grown together and eventually would have dissolved under the pressure-good intentions are nothing without God's direction.

God was in each and every moment and I'm sure there were times when He had great sadness for us.  But now I hope He smiles because we listened.  I listened.

Colossians 3:14 says
And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

Love is perfect when God is in it.  It is healing, it is renewing and it can take your breath away.  I see so clearly the gift that God gave me in my husband.  I am humbled that He said you are my choice for him.  He is my choice for you.  Enjoy, experience and let Me be in it.

If I could do it again, if my vows were spoken today I would say this:


My love, when I was still a girl, it was the idea of you that captured my heart.
I dressed you up in shining gilded armor, perched you on top
of a magnificent white horse and said,  
take me away to happily ever after.
What I know now is that you are more than perfect.
You are better than happily ever after.
You are real and you are mine.
You have carried my heart across oceans and desserts.
Faithfully tucked away where I am only yours.
Our love is deeper than time and wider than space.
You are my safe place to fall.  My forever friend.
Thank you for loving me. 



To my husband, who has watched me grow from a young woman to a mother and wife, I love you.

Striving for Pefection: A Lesson in Futility Part II

If you haven't read Part I please head on over here before going further.  It's for your benefit not mine-I tend to babble and it will keep things fluid...

If you're back for more of my ugly, imperfect self say a quick prayer that my words will be completely of the Lord.  My purpose in writing about challenges in our marriage is to acknowledge and testify that we stumble when we put ourselves before God.  And marriage is not a race but, hopefully, if we are blessed enough to grow wrinkly old together, a marathon of joys and challenges. 

Now. Where were we?

I often wonder why I had this attitude of needing things to be perfect.  I certainly was not perfect and really didn't expect it of myself.  If I did I would be a meticulous housekeeper and that, my friends, is not the case.

Did I expect mediocrity for me?  No.  Did I hold myself to the same standards as my spouse?  I said I did but probably not.  Secretly I thought he should be more like me.  More sensitive, more understanding, maybe even more passive for the sake of my pride.

I can remember being a child of the 80's. I know, just saying it gives me jelly bracelet, Madonna and side pony tail flash backs.  For me, growing up had everything to do with how I envisioned my future.  I was one big, romantic mess thrust in front of a television or boom box to be schooled in relationships.  Put upon by evocative music lyrics like "I Want Your Sex" and "Like a Virgin" my perceptions of love, maturity and marriage became distorted and out of sync with what I had been taught by my parents.  I saw perfection played out in ninety minutes on a movie screen and thought to myself, "I want that".

Am I blaming society or Hollywood for my unrealistic ideals of love and marriage? Absolutely not.  But I can honestly say, as a young, impressionable girl, when you begin to romanticise a thin, legs-up-to-here prostitute that is swept off her feet by a rich, seemingly perfect man-there is room for cracks in the foundation.  And don't even get me started with Top Gun.  That movie was just one big falic symbol rolled up in Tom Cruise goodness (before his couch jumping and weird religion gave me the heebie jeebies).

But I digress.

Let's leave the 80's and move into 1998.  Marriage day.  White dress, white gloves, white chapel.  Vows, not-so-first kiss, bubbles (rice was no longer fashionable or safe for bird consumption).  Cake, friends and family, the Ritz Carlton Hotel.  Back to work on Monday for new, darling husband.  Reality hit on Tuesday.

Forever.

And ever.  Oh crap.

I had no idea how to be a wife.  I was a amazing girlfriend-rocked the casbah in that department.  Loved his friends, loved his job, loved his mess. Our long distance, weekend relationship had been effortless and our four month engagement even better.  Fresh, exciting, new.  Now there were *gasp* expectations on both sides and not a single one spoken out loud.  Just.  Expected.  Quietly, painfully, brewing beneath the surface expectations. 

H had been an amazing boyfriend as well.  Thoughtful, generous, PATIENT.  Wow did that patience win me over.  He thought of me as quirky sometimes but loved the role of "I know better than you, but aren't you adorable".  I can't blame him-I put him there.  I loved how tough and stormy he could be because it made me feel safe.  He was, in some ways, an extension of my father.  I made him my solid rock and expected him to never waiver.

I began to change my way of thinking shortly after the birth of our beautiful son.  Our miracle.  H was deployed and I delivered with the support of friends and family. But there was no husband to welcome our son with a kiss and no looks of adoration for the bride who gave him his first child.  It was extremely painful to have that experience without him and soon after, the creeping, nagging thoughts whispered to me in those quiet moments alone with our new baby.

I did this all on my own.


I didn't need you after all.


You left me and I was still fine.

I am a good mother even without you here.

My pride began to grow, filling every void that had been opened with loneliness and insecurity.  That pedestal slowly made it's way into the earth's atmosphere and I established myself as martyr extraordinaire.  I was blameless and faultless because I had been (in my mind) abandoned.  Again and again and again.

How could he compete with that?



I know you might be wondering where God is in all of this but stick with me. We're getting there. Come back tomorrow as I finish Part III of my futile journey in perfection. 

Striving for Perfection: A Lesson in Futility Part I

Four score and eleven years (plus some months) ago I entered into the legally binding, altogether consuming bonds of matrimony.  At twenty one, in love and in desperate need of rescue I married a man who, to me, epitomized perfection.

Perfectly established.

Perfectly patient.

Perfectly encouraging and empathetic.

Perfectly driven.

Perfectly six years older to take on roles as both father and husband.

We shared a love of everything in the beginning and seemed to compliment each other in the ways that mattered most.  Him, the charming naval officer, me the young and *oh so skinny at the time* trophy wife.  Both fiercely conservative, appropriately extroverted and mutually faithful to God and family.

I made him perfect enough for the both of us.  And then later.  So much later when life did not go my way-I resented him for it. 

Gone was the care free girl who looked up to him like a doting child.  The golden pedestal I had placed him on began to slowly tarnish and crumble over the years as separation, infertility and loneliness crept into my heart like a disease. 

Thankfully and by the grace of God the love did not die. We had fun, entertained, filled our time with friends and family, traveled.  We still managed to laugh despite the biting, sarcastic banter that became our way of communicating.  This, it seemed, was what marriage was. Growing older, growing apart and settling.

It wasn't until we had two and half years together with no deployments, little travel and an abundance of time together that we realized-we really don't like each other. Really. Did. Not.  In the quiet times when the kids slept there was little to say and that became better than speaking with empty words.

I felt cheated. He was no longer perfection to me.  His pedestal had become replaced with comparison, bitterness and utter disappointment.  How could I love someone so utterly imperfect? After all of these years, had I misjudged my needs?  Was he enough for my forever?

I can say these things now because I am the proverbial fool.  A charlatan masked as a semi-pious Christian woman.  When I said for better or for worse I did not mean it.  Oh, I thought I did.  I promised and vowed with every beat of my twenty one year old heart but what I really said was  

take me as I am, but you sure as hell better not change. 

That was the moment when I set up my beloved for complete and utter failure.


Tomorrow I will continue with Part II of lessons learned in a perfectly imperfect marriage.