This Married Life

When we got together, everything seemed easy and effortless. After meeting we stayed in contact for over 15 hours straight, and we ate lunch together at work every day possible after that. He would come over while my kids slept just to spend time with me. Six months later he would ask my parents for permission to ask me to marry him. Only eleven months after meeting we got married, sure that we were Christians in love, after marriage counseling, buying a house, meeting families, coming together to raise our boys from my first marriage, we were ready for anything and more than ready to be a husband and wife. 

Reality is hard, isn’t it? 

Not two months later we had a miscarriage Christmas Eve. We were so excited when we quickly got pregnant again, only to find that my risks climbing had come to a head and it would be too risky to continue having children. Our second pregnancy together was to be our only full term pregnancy together and our last. Spending the first week of our daughter’s life in the hospital with me hooked to different things and our sons at my parents.  Not married a full year and in a hospital for a potentially life-threatening issue. 

Why do I share this right after celebrating our anniversary? Because I am thankful. 

It would seem all of our assurances that we would be fine and that we definitely knew what we were getting into, meant very little to reality. Marriage was not the happily ever after fairy tale we thought we had found when we first got together. In fact, it was this incredibly refining relationship that has highlighted all our flaws, our worst traits, and even our unrepentant hearts. 

But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power 
is perfected in weakness.” Therefore, I will most gladly boast all the more about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may reside in me.

2 Corinthians 12:9

This would not be a blog about being a wife holding on if it were not for God’s grace. I would not have realized how hard I was trying to find fulfillment in life apart from Him if He had not opened my eyes to it. 

Our marriage has been hard. There have been times we have lived apart. Regularly we have been in and out of counseling. I have been a shrew, he has been a beast. Yet, by God’s grace, we still stand as husband and wife in the eyes of God, with whom we made the covenant, and before the law of the land that shows our marriage true in the sight of man. 

As I reflect on our time together I am struck by how many times God has shown Himself faithful. How many times He has given us the opportunity to praise Him in the storm, to encourage someone else because we know how they feel, to be the shoulder for someone as we realize no matter how hard we have it there are those hurting apart from God and that is so much worse. 

I am not sharing this because our marriage is perfect now. Quite frankly, we had a rude discussion this morning that we both had to look at and say we did not speak in love during. However, I am sharing this because it is true, because God’s grace will overcome, because we are so very blessed to have the opportunity to continue growing and learning together, and because even when we are not, God is good. 

Praise God, His heart is for marriage and His grace and mercy cover the deepest wounds!

I thank God and I praise Him that we have each other still, and I rejoice all the more that through it all He is there. I pray that this new year will see us continuing to grow and keeping our focus on Jesus, and I pray each and every person who reads this will seek to know that God created marriage to glorify Him and we are so blessed to get to take part.