I have never been a movie lover, and never have I gone back to see the same movie twice… but then came Cabrini – a movie released on March 8, marking the celebration of International Women’s Day. Typically, when I hear about the celebration of women it has to do with women’s reproductive freedom, superficial beauty, independence, or how they don’t need men anymore. But Cabrini, an Italian Catholic nun born in 1850, gave her life to helping the poor, especially orphans. She was tenacious, persevering, bold and relentless in helping many Italian immigrants in New York City.
As a child she suffered from a lung disease and was told she would be bedridden for life, not living past 40. But her philosophy was,
We can serve our weakness, or we can serve our purpose.
MotherCabrini chose to serve her purpose, traveling from Italy to NYC in 1889 with five other sisters, against the advice of her superiors. She was met with chaos and poverty, finding many Italian immigrants living in squalor. Nothing, absolutely nothing would stop her from going to the streets of New York to find children living in the sewers, then taking them to a place of safety. She and the other sisters rehabbed an abandoned building, filling it with light, love, education, music and laughter.
Cabrini faced opposition on all sides, those who thought Italian immigrants were less than human, idiots, only to be used for common labor. The rich didn’t’ want to hear the truth when a front-page article appeared on the front page of the NY Times that, Even the rats in NYC lived better than the children. Of course, Mother Cabrini is the one who walked uninvited into the office of the editor of the NY Times, challenging him to visit the sewer homes of the children and write the article.
Though many tried to shut her down, she was relentless in her love for the unlovable. The pimps were against her because she gave dignity and worth to young girls they hoped to use for their business. Yet Cabrini would not be stopped, assuring the other sisters that God would give them strength to continue their work.
Amazingly, Cabrini lived until she was 67 – defying all the predictions of the medical professionals in her life. Since her death, the influence of her work in NYC has reached six continents and 15 other countries in the world – always with the goal of serving the most vulnerable in every city and giving them the dignity they deserve.
Have you ever noticed that the story of the Bible begins with a marriage and ends with a marriage? In their book Love and War, John and Stasi Eldredge point out that the epic story of human history, spanning thousands of years, begins with a couple. As God unfolds the beautiful, frightening, mysterious story of His love, there is not some lone hero standing against the world, but a man and a woman – a marriage.
Then in the book of Revelation, the last book in the Bible, there appears a white horse and its rider, ready for the great battle of Armegeddon, and the end of the world as we know it. Finally a feast – a wedding feast. The wedding here is between Jesus Christ and his bride, the Church.
In a sense, marriage is a picture of the Kingdom of God. It is meant to bring glory to God because,
God is love and where there is love, there is God. (Mother Teresa)
When we love each other in our marriages, forgive when there are offenses (and there will be offenses every day), sacrifice for one another, never give up hope, always persevere in the difficult times of life, we are modeling what the love of God is all about.
The bottom line story of the Bible is Love. God loves us and He wants us to love one another. Sounds simple, but as you and I know, it’s not. Why? Because this beautiful love story is set in the middle of a dreadful war.
Think of all the fairy tales that you love. One of my favorites is The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Anderson, later made into a Disney movie. If you remember the movie, that love story is placed in a war as well. Ursula, the sea witch, was doing everything she could to keep Ariel and the Prince from marrying, making a mockery of love. In the end, the Prince and Ariel did marry but not without a battle of heroic proportions.
Think of the famous girls and boys in other adventure stories you have read: Shasta and Aravis in The Horse and His Boy, being driven together by Aslan; Hansel and Gretel holding hands together for safety in the dark woods; Beauty and the Beast learning to love so that they will both be free. People all over the world love those stories. Why? Maybe it’s because we want to live stories like that as well.
The honeymoon of Adam and Eve barely started when the serpent successfully snakes in with a plan to break everyone’s heart. His deceptive lie separated the humans from God and from each other. Now there was distrust, blaming, shaming, and betrayal. Satan’s plan has not changed one bit since then, he comes only to kill, steal and destroy.
But in this, the world’s darkest moment, love shines through. In spite of chronic unbelief on our part, God pledges to love and pursue you and me. He does this through the great Prince, son of the King, Jesus Christ. Christianity is truly the most preeminent love story the world has ever known.
This story is not over, it is still unfolding right now, even as you are reading. The terrible clash between the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of darkness continues. At the core of this age old struggle, there is one overarching question that is being raised: Can a kingdom of love prevail? God vows that Love never fails, (1 Corinthians 13:8) but the world laughs and the devil laughs. Sometimes we laugh too. It sounds so naïve. Love seems so weak when compared to the evil surrounding us.
Your marriage is set in the middle of this story, the age-old beautiful story of God pursuing His people; it is a story of redemption, a story of love. But that story is opposed, because it is an outrageously brazen story to illustrate His heart of love toward us.
It seems that if we as married couples can’t find a great battle to fight together we’ll start one with each other. For years I saw my husband as the enemy of our marriage. He wouldn’t agree with me on how to raise our daughters – on which movies to watch, how to discipline, decisions on spending money….and on and on. So I fought with him, fighting for my opinion to win, my view to be the right view. Not surprisingly, this did not improve our marriage.
Then God finally opened my eyes to see the spiritual battle that was going on, a battle that could only be fought effectively with prayer and love. You know the verse “Love your enemies, pray for those who hurt you…”? Well, when I finally started doing what this verse says, a ray of hope sprang up in my heart. I started trusting God to do His work, instead of me trying to change things. And that is precisely when things started to change.
Oh how I lament the years that I tried to do things in my own power, but God is so gracious. He patiently waits for each of us to come to the point of giving up on ourselves and giving in to Him. He never coerces, never pressures, he simply pursues, encouraging us through his Spirit.
We are prone to wander, forget, and go back to old patterns, but for that too God is patient, forgiving and filled with grace, urging us to get up and try again.
God loves you as you are, not as you should be. (Brennan Manning)
Have you ever heard of a bird who sings in the dark? I recently watched Jane Marczewski (known as Nightbirde) on AGT and was blown away by her authenticity and joy even as she suffers so much as a young 30-year-old. Jane is an amazing singer and songwriter – which is not an unusual vocation – but it is her story that is so rare. Nightbirde has suffered more in her three decades of life than most people suffer in 70 years.
Having been through three cancer treatments during the past few years (spine, liver and lungs) she expresses with raw emotions the pain she still suffers. Her husband of four years left her, so she deals with abandonment along with a body not functioning well.
Jane chose the stage name Nightbirde because one morning around 3 am she heard some birds in the tree outside her window singing as if the sun were arriving, quite unusual for birds. She then thought, If birds can sing in the dark, so can I.
Here’s a few of her words:
I am God’s downstairs neighbor, banging on the ceiling with a broomstick. I show up at His door every day.
Sometimes with songs, sometimes with curses.
Sometimes apologies, gifts, questions, demands.
Sometimes I use my key under the mat to let myself in. Other times, I sulk outside until He opens the door to me Himself.
I have called Him a cheat and a liar, and I meant it.
I have told Him I wanted to die, and I meant it.
Tears have become the only prayer I know. Prayers roll over my nostrils and drip down my forearms. They fall to the ground as I reach for Him. These are the prayers I repeat night and day; sunrise, sunset.
Call me bitter if you want to—that’s fair.
Count me among the angry, the cynical, the offended, the hardened.
But count me also among the friends of God.
It’s not the mercy that I asked for, but it is mercy nonetheless. And I learn a new prayer: thank you. It’s a prayer I don’t mean yet, but will repeat until I do.
For I have seen Him in rare form. I have felt His exhale, laid in His shadow,
squinted to read the message He wrote for me in the grout: “I’m sad too.”
I have heard it said that some people can’t see God because they won’t look low enough, and it’s true. Look lower. God is on the bathroom floor.
Allison Potoka
Yes, God is on the bathroom floor. He inhabits our groaning, our temper tantrums, our questions and our tears. He is sad with us, yet has promised to never leave us, even when others have. He can handle our bitterness and our cynical words, He simply wants us to talk to Him. He is Immanuel, God with us.
Love, Mom
You can’t wait until life isn’t hard anymore before you decide to be happy. – Nightbirde
I had never noticed that the Bible begins with a marriage and ends with a marriage. In their book Love and War, John and Stasi Eldredge point out that the epic story of human history, spanning thousands of years, begins in Genesis with a garden and a couple. As God unfolds the beautiful, frightening, mysterious story of His love, there is not some lone hero standing against the world, but a man and a woman – a marriage.
In the book of Revelation, the end of the world as we know it – after a very long battle – there is finally a feast, a wedding feast. The wedding here is between Jesus Christ and his bride, the church.
In a sense, marriage is the Kingdom of God. It is meant to bring glory to God because God is love and where there is love, there is God. (Mother Teresa) When we love each other in our marriages, forgive when there are offenses (and there will be offenses every day), sacrifice for one another, never give up hope, always persevere in the difficult times of life, we are modeling what the love of God is all about.
The bottom line story of the Bible is Love. God loves us and He wants us to love one another. Sounds simple, but as we both know, it’s not. Why? Because this beautiful love story is placed in the middle of a dreadful war.
Think of all the fairy tales you love. One of my favorites is The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Anderson, later made into a Disney movie. If you remember, that love story is placed in the midst of a war as well. Ursula, the sea witch, was doing everything she could to keep Ariel and the Prince from marrying, making a mockery of love. In the end, the Prince and Ariel did marry but not without a battle of heroic proportions.
Think of the famous girls and boys in other adventure stories you have read: Shasta and Aravis in The Horse and His Boy, being driven together by Aslan the Lion. Hansel and Gretel holding hands together for safety in the dark woods, Beauty and the Beast learning to love so they can both be free. People all over the world love those stories. Why? Because we want to live stories like that as well.
The honeymoon of Adam and Eve barely started when the serpent successfully snaked in with a plan to break everyone’s heart. His deceptive lie hissed, You can live without God and because that lie was embraced, there was broken fellowship between the humans and God. It was the beginning of distrust, blaming, shaming, and betrayal. Satan’s plan has not changed one iota since; he comes only to kill, steal and divide.
But in this, the world’s darkest moment, love shone through. In spite of chronic unbelief on our part, God pledged to love and pursue us. He did this through the great Prince, Son of the King, Jesus Christ. Christianity is truly the most preeminent love story the world has ever known.
This story is not over, it is still unfolding right now, even as you are reading. The terrible clash between the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of darkness continues. At the core of this age-old struggle, there is one overarching question that is being raised: Can a kingdom of love prevail? God vows that Love never fails, (1 Corinthians 13:8) but the world laughs and the devil laughs. Sometimes we laugh too. It sounds so naïve. Love seems so weak when compared to all the evil around us.
Your marriage is set in the midst of this story, the age-old beautiful story of God pursuing His people; it is a story of redemption, a story of love. But that story is opposed, because we have an enemy who desires to see our marriages and families divided. His goal is to bring bitterness and strife.
It seems that if we as married couples can’t find a great battle to fight together we’ll start one with each other. For years I saw Dad as the enemy of our marriage. He wouldn’t agree with me on how to raise you girls, on which movies to watch, how to discipline, decisions on spending money….and on and on. So I fought with him, fighting for my opinion to win, my view to be the right view. Not surprisingly, this did not improve our marriage.
Then God finally opened my eyes to see the spiritual battle that was going on, a battle that could only be fought effectively with prayer and love. You know the verse, Love your enemies, prayfor those who hurt you…? Well, when I finally started doing what this verse says, a ray of hope sprang up in my heart. I started trusting God to do His work, instead of me trying to change things. And that is precisely when things started to change.
Oh, how I lament the years that I tried to do things in my own power, but God is so gracious. He patiently waits for each of us to come to the point of giving up on ourselves and giving in to Him. He never coerces, never pressures, but simply pursues and encourages us through his Spirit.
We are prone to wander, forget, and go back to old patterns, but for that too God is patient, forgiving and filled with grace, always urging us to get up and try again.
God loves you as you are, not as you should be. (Brennan Manning)
What is your favorite adventure story? One of my favorites is from the Chronicles of Narnia series, The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis. The story is about a boy and girl along with two talking horses escaping to Narnia, a country far from where they met. They are both separately fleeing the wickedness that is being planned against each one of them.
The children, Shasta and Aravis, did not at all like the other when they first met, but because of life’s circumstances and Aslan’s guiding paw, they bonded together (often out of necessity) in order to keep safe and complete the journey. Their expedition was complete with arguments, danger, difficult decisions of loyalty, and dealing with ordinary human quirks of pride and selfishness.
Every great story has battles and is filled with adventure, marriage being no exception. I had never perceived my marriage as a shared adventure until I read the chapter by that name in John and Stasi Eldredge’s book Love and War. The Bible is filled with the drama and adventure of marriage – Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, David and Bathsheba, Hosea and Gomer. In all these marriages there were times of discord, anger, conniving, trickery, blame and heartbreak.
Marriages today are no different from thousands of years ago. Yes, the outward trappings have changed, but the emotions, challenges and battles remain the same. Just as God chose to work through those long-ago marriages, so He works through yours and mine. He has an adventure and a mission in mind for you and your man.
Whether it is traveling together, erecting a tent, or discovering a beautiful national park, we are awakened from the dulling effect of the daily grind. Some of Dad’s and my biggest fights came as I, the directionally impaired navigator, tried to make sense of the paper Atlas (way before Google Maps) and would tell him as we were flying by an exit that I think this is the exit we were supposed to take. Putting up a tent together wasn’t exactly romantic either but we learned something new and decided to forgive after a bit of grousing.
Anyway, it’s good for us to have adventures, but also a shared mission in life.
I had never before thought about my marriage as having a mission apart from raising children and trying to have a happy home. Both of those goals are good and noble, but if that is your only goal in life it’s going to be tough when the kids are out of the house and you realize that you don’t even know your husband any more. Once the kids are gone the sense of shared adventure evaporates. That is why empty nesters’ divorce rate is so high. The children were hiding the chasm – the husband and wife were never one.
When Dad started pastoring, I began teaching music Monday through Friday. It was not an ideal situation. Our days off were never the same, he took Mondays; I never took a day off – which I have paid for in recent years. We never took date nights (practical me thought they were too frivolous and expensive) and we drifted apart. We each had our own separate calling, and yes sometimes we collaborated on projects but really didn’t have a shared mission.
As John Eldredge says:
A beautiful you and a beautiful me in a beautiful place forever is not the right vision of a marriage. It backfires on you; it betrays you. For one thing, it ain’t gonna happen. Not until heaven. You will feel hurt and you’ll look for someone to blame if you hold on to this as your life’s goal. And besides, the vision is too self-centered, too inwardly turned. Like a bad toenail.
It seems strange, but now that Dad and I are caretakers for Grandpa and Grandma, I feel like this is the closest thing to a shared mission we have ever had. It takes both of us to do the work here, we tag team. Dad and I call ourselves Team Koopman, along with Rhonda, Valerie, Cheryl, Robert, Ruth, Jinx and Judy. We have a shared mission, a common goal – to lovingly care for Grandpa and Grandma here in their home.
Is it all smiles and happiness? No. Just last night Dad and I had a spat along with some strong words having to do with the division of labor. After almost 40 years we still do not see eye to eye on many subjects. But one thing I have learned recently is that I need to ask God to show me the plank in my own eye before I try to point out the speck in Dad’s.
Is it all difficult and heartbreaking? No. There is humor when Grandma waters the artificial plant in the Dr. office, and when she carries the large calendar around asking which day it is so she can be sure that we don’t forget to go where we need to go. Yes, there is sadness when I remember how bright and spry Grandpa and Grandma used to be, and see how difficult it is for them now. There is disappointment for Grandpa and me when I have to tell him that I don’t think it’s a good idea for him to fly to California by himself at age 90 to visit friends.
But over all there is still joy. Joy that we have a supportive crew to share in the mission we have here, which I know brings so much pleasure to the heart of God.
Have you ever asked Jesus what mission he has for you?
I encourage you to ask Him to give you a vision, a shared passion for something in the Larger Story of life. He may answer your prayer with a friend in need who needs encouragement, a disruption in life that may change the location or direction of your life, a calling that has always been lingering in your heart but now seems to be something within reach. As Frederick Buechner says:
The place where God calls us is the place where our deep joy and the world’s deep hunger meet.
How awesome would that be to find a shared mission that you both could embark on together? It’s interesting that complaining about the dirty dishes in the sink or replacing the roll of toilet paper doesn’t seem so significant when we are working together fighting to rescue girls from the sex trade, assisting a refugee family as they adapt to a new country, helping to find healing for young child soldiers, trying to encourage a family in the inner city, giving hope to a confused and hopeless teen.
Now you might find that some of your desires and dreams are not shared by your spouse. Each person has a unique role to play; we all have a personal calling. So sometimes it may be a most beautiful expression of companionship when we simply lay down our lives to help with our spouse’s calling.
I think of Dave and Joyce Meyer. Joyce is the focal point with her preaching, but Dave has laid down his life to be the support system for Joyce, preparing the way for her conventions and being her biggest cheerleader. Love is always in season.
Back to the story of The Horse and His Boy. The seemingly random adventure of Shasta and Aravis turned out to be part of a much Larger Story. Their journey together through the desert eventually led them to save Narnia from some fierce invaders intent on destroying the land. Aslan the Lion (a Jesus-like figure) had, of course, guided the whole story from behind the scenes.
Shasta and Aravis continued to have many quarrels but they always made it up so that years later “when they were grown up, they were so used to quarreling and making up again that they got married so as to go on doing it more conveniently.”
God brought both of you together for a beautiful reason. You need each other, and the world needs both of you – together.
Every marriage will have storms that descend. It may start as soon as the honeymoon is over. Or it may come at the death of a child or a parent, an addiction – pornography, alcohol – or an outright betrayal. Sometimes it will come when the children grow up and move out, leaving us to wonder who this person is that we’ve been living with for decades. However the storm comes, it can feel like our world is falling apart at the seams. The safe haven meant to be a sanctuary for two hearts in marriage may sometimes feel like the least safe place at all.
Here in Idaho, wind is commonly a part of the weather forecast. Just the other night a storm woke me, howling, rattling the windows and throwing up sticks and twigs from the trees surrounding the house. Looking outside I could see tumbleweeds blowing furiously across the lane, rain pelting the sidewalks and driveway.
Sometimes our lives can feel like that – the forces and circumstances of our worlds seem bent on knocking us to pieces. We may think that we cannot handle one more thing that goes wrong in our life, and then something else does go wrong. We tremble with the knowledge that we may not be able to hang on for another hour.
Dad and I are finally at a place that we are unified, most of the time. Since I have in the past been the Queen of Blame, there are still some days when things go wrong and my mind starts blaming him again. Old habits die hard. At times it’s still a challenge to keep sarcastic remarks from flying out of my mouth. The Evil One is always trying to drive a wedge between us, and of that we can be assured of happening until the day we die.
Today was especially hard for me since I had not fallen asleep until 3 a.m. When I woke, Dad was his normal jovial self, wanting a big hug and kiss and I was not in the mood. I just wanted to grouse in my own private corner and have a personal pity party. I felt like I had a right to be crabby because my insomnia is chronic and my fatigue is constant. So I grumbled at my sad state of affairs and ignored him. He wisely left me alone.
When the tempests arise, whatever else may be going on in your marriage, you know that God is working on your transformation, right? God will use hard times to expose your sin as well as your husband’s. Instead of simply lamenting the storm, it is always wise to seek God and ask, What do you want to expose, what are you after? As hard as it will be, try to accept the work that Jesus is doing in your own character.
Why is marriage so hard? Every one of us is a broken, hurting person, but instead of talking about our pain we often get embarrassed and try to hide it. Unfortunately, if we don’t deal with our pain it will become hurt and pain to others around us as well. Hurting people hurt people.
Thankfully Dad just walked away this morning. He could have taken offense at my attitude and things could have gotten ugly, but he knows me well enough to give me space on days like this. After a few hours I was able to enter the human race once again, barely. I talked about my discouragement with my physical condition, he listened and encouraged me, told me he still loved me. I am continually working on being content whatever the circumstance, but still I fail.
Marriage has its seasons, there are ebbs and flows. The writer of Ecclesiastes 3:2-8 says that there is a time for everything…. A time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance…. There are times when you and your man are close, and other times when you feel like the distance of the chasm between you can be measured in light-years. That’s normal. Have patience with yourself and with him.
Jesus tells a story about two houses and how they each fared when the storms hit.
Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash. Matthew 7:24-27
The storms will certainly come, that is a promise. How we respond to those storms depends on our willingness to trust in God and His ways. What are those ways and words of His that we need to put into practice?I love the passage from Colossians:
Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another.
Corrie ten Boom, the Dutch woman who hid Jews and was sentenced to a Nazi concentration camp because of it, was told by another woman while in prison that the only way a person could survive in the camp was to hate. Corrie’s reply was “Hate can put you in a worse prison than this.”
Even though love and goodness are difficult, they are the best and most powerful weapons in our arsenal. When the winds blow and the waters rise we need to return to some very basic truths.
1) I am loved (Jeremiah 31:3)
2) I am secure (John 10:28-29)
3) I am forgiven (Colossians 2:13)
4) God is with me always and forever (Hebrew 13:4)
Whatever happens, stay close to Jesus. He is your Rock and your Hiding Place, he is your refuge from the storms that descend. I cannot guarantee that your marriage will be healed, that the addict will desire to change, that prodigal children will come back any time soon. But I can assure you that you are deeply and truly loved by your Heavenly Father. I promise that God is with you and will never, ever abandon you; and I guarantee that you can find peace in the midst of the storm.
Love, Mom
What makes a marriage better is to keep on going through the worst.
When I was dating Dad I was so excited when my birthday, Valentine’s Day, or Christmas came along because he always got me the greatest gifts. Once it was a beautiful piece of luggage (he knew I was soon to take a trip to California.) Another time it was a smaller piece of luggage matching the first, then a necklace…
Well, when we got married, all that gift giving stopped. I didn’t figure it out or ask about it at first, but over the months when the gifts had become rare I asked Dad why things had changed so much after we married. I was hurt and did not feel as loved anymore. No gift equals no love, right? Then the truth came out. His mom had been the gift-buyer while he had been single, now it was up to him and during his many hours of work he just never thought about it.
Did he love me any less? I don’t think so, but in my heart it felt as if love was waning.
The reason for the lack of gifts was simple enough, but that knowledge of why didn’t take care of my hurt and feeling of rejection. I had some expectations from Dad and they weren’t being fulfilled the way I thought they should be. Ann Voskamp has so wisely said Expectations kill relationships.
When we expect our husbands to satisfy us, make us happy, fill the emptiness in our souls, we are setting ourselves up for a disastrous marriage. All humans are leaky buckets, sieve-like vessels, holey jars – however you want to say it. We all run out of love quickly and completely on our own. We simply cannot fill another’s soul with our own love, and when we expect our husbands to fill our souls with their love it’s just not going to work.
In Love and War John Eldredge says it so well:
The human heart has an infinite capacity for happiness and an unending need for love, because it is created for an infinite God who is unending love. The desperate turn is when we bring the aching abyss of our hearts to one another with the hope, the plea, `Make me happy. Fill this ache.’ And often out of love we do try to make one another happy, and then we wonder why it never lasts.
Our husbands are not capable of giving us the love that our hearts and souls desire, and we’ll be terribly disappointed if we insist they try. Every woman has an insatiable need for relationship. Every man aches for affirmation, to know that he has what it takes to make a relationship work. There is an intense fear of failure in all of us when we rely on ourselves for the love we need to make a marriage work.
I have talked to many women about marriage and they all have said that they are, in one way or another, disappointed with their marriage. It’s ok to admit that. Most likely your husband is disappointed as well. There’s no way that we can possibly be enough for each other.
Early in our marriage I complained about how Dad did things, I tried to change him to be more like me, I gave guilt trips. Nothing worked even though I was an amazingly proficient fault finder and constant corrector. One day he finally said to me “I’m never good enough, am I? You’re just never satisfied.” And it was true. I never could be satisfied because I was looking to him to make me happy and he was not capable of doing that. As a young 20-something, what did I know about love? Not much.
In time I learned that the greatest gift you can give your husband and your marriage is to develop a real relationship with Jesus Christ. You need to have someone to turn to when you’re hurt. You need comfort and understanding for the healing of your own brokenness. And you need that Person to be available 24 hours a day. Your husband can’t do all that for you, nor can you do all that for him. In Psalm 62:1 David says: “My soul finds rest in God alone.”
God is the deepest, truest love that you are longing for and He shows you in so many ways that He loves you. You can see it in the beauty of creation, the fresh alfalfa fields, a beautiful sunset, snowflakes melting on your tongue, the warm sunshine on your face, the songs of birds and the ears to hear them.
The most important prayer you can ever pray is to simply say: “God, open my eyes to your love. Draw my heart to you, and teach me to love like You love.”
We are all leaky buckets looking for a waterfall that never ends. And that waterfall is Jesus Christ, the Living Water. David Wilcox sings about it so vividly in his song Break in the Cup.
We cannot trade empty for empty
We must go to the waterfall
For there’s a break in the cup that holds love…
Inside us all.
When I depend on God’s love to fill me up, (and I need to be filled again every morning) I can love Dad much better because I don’t feel the need to change or control him.
You too, will find so much more joy in your marriage once you stop looking to your husband to make you happy and instead look to your Creator, the maker of your soul.
I had never noticed that the Bible begins with a marriage and ends with a marriage. In their book Love and War, John and Stasi Eldredge point out that the epic story of human history, spanning thousands of years, begins with a couple. As God unfolds the beautiful, frightening, mysterious story of His love, there is not some lone hero standing against the world, but a man and a woman – a marriage.
Then at the end of the written Word, in the book of Revelation, there appears a white horse and its rider, the battle of Armegeddon, the end of the world as we know it, then finally a feast – a wedding feast. The wedding here is between Jesus Christ and his bride, the church.
In a sense, marriage is the Kingdom of God. It is meant to bring glory to God because God is love and where there is love, there is God. (Mother Teresa) When we love each other in our marriages, forgive when there are offenses (and there will be offenses every day), sacrifice for one another, never give up hope, always persevere in the difficult times of life, we are modeling what the love of God is all about.
The bottom line story of the Bible is Love. God loves us and He wants us to love one another. Sounds simple, but as you and I know, it’s not. Why? Because this beautiful love story is placed in the middle of a dreadful war.
Think of all the fairy tales that you love. One of my favorites is The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Anderson, later made into a Disney movie. The movie came out during a time when we were all living out on the plains of Kansas. If you remember the movie, that love story is placed in the midst of a war as well. Ursula, the sea witch, was doing everything she could to keep Ariel and the Prince from marrying, making a mockery of love. In the end, the Prince and Ariel did marry but not without a battle of heroic proportions.
Think of the famous girls and boys in other adventure stories you have read: Shasta and Aravis in The Horse and His Boy, being driven together by Aslan; Hansel and Gretel holding hands together for safety in the dark woods; Beauty and the Beast learning to love so that they will both be free. People all over the world love those stories. Why? John and Stasi think it’s because we want to live stories like that as well.
The honeymoon of Adam and Eve barely started when the serpent successfully snakes in with a plan to break everyone’s heart. His deceptive lie separated the humans from God and from each other. Now there was distrust, blaming, shaming, and betrayal. Satan’s plan has not changed one iota since then, he comes only to kill, steal and destroy.
But in this, the world’s darkest moment, love shines through. In spite of chronic unbelief on our part, God pledges to love and pursue us. He does this through the great Prince, son of the King, Jesus Christ. Christianity is truly the most preeminent love story the world has ever known.
This story is not over, it is still unfolding right now, even as you are reading. The terrible clash between the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of darkness continues. At the core of this age old struggle, there is one overarching question that is being raised: Can a kingdom of love prevail? God vows that “Love never fails,” (1 Corinthians 13:8) but the world laughs and the devil laughs. Sometimes we laugh too. It sounds so naïve. Love seems so weak when compared to all the evil around us.
Your marriage is set in the midst of this story, the age-old beautiful story of God pursuing His people; it is a story of redemption, a story of love. But that story is opposed, because it is an outrageously brazen story to illustrate His heart of love toward us
It seems that if we as married couples can’t find a great battle to fight together we’ll start one with each other. For years I saw Dad as the enemy of our marriage. He wouldn’t agree with me on how to raise you girls, on which movies to watch, how to discipline, decisions on spending money….and on and on. So I fought with him, fighting for my opinion to win, my view to be the right view. Not surprisingly, this did not improve our marriage.
Then God finally opened my eyes to see the spiritual battle that was going on, a battle that could only be fought effectively with prayer and love. You know the verse “Love your enemies, pray for those who hurt you…”? Well, when I finally started doing what this verse says, a ray of hope sprang up in my heart. I started trusting God to do His work, instead of me trying to change things. And that is precisely when things started to change.
Oh how I lament the years that I tried to do things in my own power, but God is so gracious. He patiently waits for each of us to come to the point of giving up on ourselves and giving in to Him. He never coerces, never pressures, he simply pursues, encouraging us through his Spirit.
We are prone to wander, forget, and go back to old patterns, but for that too God is patient, forgiving and filled with grace, urging us to get up and try again.
God loves you as you are, not as you should be. (Brennan Manning)
In the den we have a large Sun Remembrance Calendar to keep track of days filled with sunshine. Grandma laments so quickly when we have just one gray day, so I decided to decorate the calendar with reminders of the sunny days. At the beginning of February there were several dismal, dreary days in a row and she continued to grieve the loss of the sun. So now I direct her to the Calendar to see the many bright, filled-with-sunshine days that we have enjoyed. She seems to be encouraged by the visual of all those yellow-sun-blue-sky days, even on those that are gloomy.
As I was finishing up yet another (16 days in a row) sunny day marking I started thinking about how quickly we forget the sunshine and faithfulness of God in our lives. We receive abounding mercies every day that grace our lives, yet when a disappointment comes we cry out in surprise and hurt, thinking God doesn’t care.
I have recently finished a most excellent book on marriage entitled Love and War by John and Stasi Eldredge, a fitting title for marriage, don’t you think? The Eldredges have been married for 30 years and have been on the brink of divorce several times. Interestingly, they begin the book with the following two sentences: Marriage can be done. And it is worth it.
All of us who have been married experience surprise and shock when we discover how hard it is. The feelings that lure us into marriage – romance, love, passion, sex, companionship – often seem far from the actual reality of married life. I think most of us dreamed that our husbands would perpetually try to please us, constantly cheer us on when we have hard days and be that rock of stability we have always desired.
Dad and I went into marriage with no premarital course, no Engaged Encounter weekend. We simply discussed with our pastor how we wanted the wedding ceremony to be – and of course my main goal was lots of good music including The Hallelujah Chorus as we were exiting the ceremony in the beautiful month of May. Because we were both Christians, we (and apparently everyone else) thought we’d sail through our marriage so smoothly. But let me tell you I certainly wasn’t singing The Hallelujah Chorus when October came around. Dad was so stubborn, selfish, and unbending in the most peculiar areas. Of course, it took years for me to see the same things in myself.
In Chapter 1 of Love and War John and Stasi encourage us to remember what we originally longed for in marriage, the desire to be known and loved for who we are. But who in the world actually knows who they are when they get married?
If only some older woman would have warned me what typically happens in marriage, saying something like this: “Listen, Shari – you’re a fine young woman and Larry is a wonderful guy but you are both deeply broken people. All that brokenness will be coming to the surface as soon as you say `I do.’ Don’t be surprised, it happens to everyone. It doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong, but don’t ignore what surfaces. God is going to use your marriage to bring up the issues in your life that He wants to address. Each of you have devised a way of making life work and those ways will collide sooner rather than later. Don’t run away from this stuff when things get difficult. Get some help, read some books, talk to some older couples who have wisdom and vulnerability. Above all don’t give up. Marriage is worth the fight.”
I find it interesting that Adam and Eve, even though they had the perfect parent, made a mess of the lives they were given. After they were finished with the initial blaming and hiding God came looking for them. “Where are you?” (Genesis 3:9) As they were running away, God pursued them and He continues to pursue us in our marriages today. He wants us to remember the desire, the dream that we had when we first fell in love. He understands the sorrow, pain and rejection that we have experienced in our marriages, and He offers life to us if we will invite Him into our relationship. My desire, decades ago, was that I could be known and yet still loved and valued. I wanted to share my life, my joys and my sorrows with Dad because life can be hard, cruel and often dangerous. I longed to go on an adventure with him, just like in the fairy tales I had loved as a child.
All those things have happened in the past 38 years, but not as soon and certainly not how I envisioned they would. It took a lot longer than I ever dreamed because I had no idea how broken both Dad and I were. There were times we lost heart, yet we both remembered what we had desired in our marriage and we continued to trust God to teach us, lead us, and give us His love for one another. We certainly were not capable of loving each other on our own.
As John Eldredge says “Asking for your marriage to flourish without God is like asking a tree to blossom without sunshine and water.” But letting that Life into our marriage is like opening all the doors and windows of our house in the spring time and letting the Son shine in. He brings real love, genuine companionship, joy, long suffering and a shared mission.
Remember, never forget those desires that were planted in your heart long ago, don’t lose heart, and trust God to make them come to life – in His time.
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