Shortly after my 50th birthday I started thinking about my mortality. I had recently attended a funeral which caused me to reflect on what people will say about my life when I’m lying there in a coffin, cold and lifeless. Then I got to figuring that my life is probably at least half way over, which made me wonder if anything I had done up till now was vaguely important. Funny how living in everyday life we can go on and on and never think these thoughts.
Around that same time three of our four daughters were married and I knew that there were some problems in their marriages. Our youngest daughter was in a serious relationship as well and she too was going through some challenging times with her boyfriend. Now I know that every human relationship and especially marriage has times of struggle, times of joy, and some times of simply co-existing. But I knew that I hadn’t modeled a good marriage while our daughters were home. I had never sat down and taught them how to love their husbands. Sure, I had taught them lots without using any words, but much of it was stuff of which I am not proud.
A while later I got reflecting on my own marriage and how I never really had anyone in my younger years to teach or encourage me to love my husband better. Now I must say that since my parents had been married for over 50 years at the time I knew that faithfulness and keeping ones promises were very important. But about the everyday friction, power struggles, and basic principles of what makes a marriage good, I was quite ignorant.
My friend, Mary, said that when she got married her mother-in-law told her that when you get married you just “do stuff together.” While that sounds fun and simple, I have found that marriage is a bit more complex than simply “doing stuff.” For one thing there were lots of times in the early years when I wanted to do stuff on my own, and so I did. No communicating, no desire to be together. I simply wanted to do life my way and if my husband didn’t agree…..oh well, I did it anyway.
Around this time of reflection I was struggling with some long-standing fatigue issues and was limited to the couch several hours every afternoon. One day as I was on the couch I started reading a book about marriage, a really good book. I actually think it was the first book I had ever read on the subject, and this after more than 30 years of marriage. I’m sorry to admit that the only reason I was reading it was because it was the book of the month that my book club was reading. I was so amazed to learn principles that people in good marriages practice that actually help communication, which in turn allow love to grow more deeply and the marriage to become more satisfying and rich. About half-way through the book I thought “Wow, if I could teach some of these things to our daughters, maybe they wouldn’t have to make all the stupid mistakes that I’ve made!” So I started writing my first letter to our daughters. In the blog that follows you will find a series of letters (posted once a week) that I have written over many years, things that God has taught me and that I want to pass on to the next generation. As I wrote and learned and lived, I also started loving my husband better than I had in the past. God really does have the best ideas about marriage because He’s the one who created it.
Then one day I saw it in Scripture. Titus 2:4-5 teaches, “Then they (the older women) can train the younger women to love their husbands and children….” Now I’m not crazy about the fact that I’m an “older woman” because frankly it just sounds, well, old. But facts are facts and I have reconciled to the reality that I have a job to do and I want to do it well. So…..perhaps you have already been living out these principles. Good for you! All I know is that I have seen the good changes that have happened not only in my own marriage, but also in the marriages of our daughters.
Our family used to be kinda like a pile of branches. But God is slowly and surely transforming us into a tree. Plus, the really great thing is that I can talk about these letters with our daughters, pray for God to open all of our eyes, and then share the good and hard things that are happening in all our lives.
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