Dear Daughters,
Have you ever looked over at that husband of yours and wondered “who is this guy?” There are times when, even after decades of marriage, it seems as though I am living with a stranger.
When we marry, we are often in love with a fantasy rather than a real human person. While dating, our best side always shines, but then marriage and reality come, flaws surface and we begin to wonder if we ever knew him in the first place.
How can we know when we marry who our man will turn out to be? On the other hand, how can he know who we will become?
I must admit that I married for selfish reasons. I married because I wanted security, children, a soul-mate, and someone to make me happy. I soon found that this was not Dad’s central focus. He had work to do, dreams to chase, and he was thinking that my central focus in life should be to make him happy.
I began to consider that perhaps I had married the wrong person.
While dating, Dad saw only a joyful, cheerful woman. During the seasons of our lives, however, he has seen me angry, disheartened, sick, hopeless, livid, and thankfully at times, that previously joyful and cheerful woman as well. To be fair, I have seen all those same passions in him.
Instead of being repulsed and ready to bail when those potentially divisive events happen, what if we expected marriage to be about helping each other grow out of our flaws and sins and into the person God is creating? It would be much easier to expect those challenging times and when they happen, and understand that this is just another facet of love (patience, kindness, forgiveness…) that we need to learn.
But, alas, our selfish natures demand that we get our way. If we don’t we often throw a tantrum, give the silent treatment, or some other unproductive behavior.
When I married Dad I had no idea where our lives would go. I thought I had married an Idaho dairyman, just like my two sisters. Indeed I had, but for only four short years. Then it was off to Michigan with our two little girls, enrolling in seminary, moving and living in five different houses in five years as Dad was required to do internship work in various cities and states. There were times, after a move, that I would feel as if I had been thrown into the spin cycle of a washing machine, then tossed out into a whole new world.
Coming back to Idaho for vacations, I would often be envious of the families who were still living in the same house, having a somewhat predictable life and putting down roots with friends. They went to the same grocery store every week, they knew where everything was down each of those aisles, and they didn’t get lost while driving in their town. I remember going back to Michigan with that big green-eyed monster dangling its tentacles in my mind.
Early on I found that I could not depend on friends to last. I would get to know people for a few months, say good-bye, and start over in yet another location. It seemed that saying hello and good-bye would become the only predictable events I could count on in my life.
At this point I had a choice to make: I could either accept and rejoice in the life that God had given me (I had certainly not chosen it) or I could wallow in the mire of self-pity, wishing I was some other guy’s wife living an established, non-moving life. For a time I did not accept my lot in life. I began to see God as cold and non-caring; I did not trust that He loved me. It certainly didn’t feel like He cared.
David the King spoke my feelings so well:
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning?
O my God, I cry out by day but you do not answer, by night, and am not silent.
~ Psalm 22
Have you ever felt forgotten, dropped by God, hearing nothing but silence from heaven?
Here I was, a pastor’s wife, going through the motions of being a good church lady, but inside disappointed and disgruntled with my life and with God. Dad had become a stranger to me, and I to him. He was intent in his work, striving to show himself a good pastor, me delving into making a somewhat stable life for you girls.
You may have felt that separation in your own marriage, going in different directions and drifting farther and farther apart. The next logical thing seems to be to split up, try someone new, find someone better, someone more compatible. But you know what? I have talked to many married women and have found none that live in a compatible marriage.
Tim Keller teaches “…that the great thing about the model of Christian marriage we are presenting here is that when you envision the ‘someone better,’ you can think about the future version of the person to whom you are already married. The someone better is the spouse that you already have. God has indeed given us a desire for the perfect spouse, but you should see it in the one to whom you’re married…. The only way you’re going to actually begin to see another person’s ‘glory-self’ is to stick with him or her.”
Marriage is, at its best, trusting God with the man that He has entrusted to you. Yes, there will be fights, misunderstandings, anger. But continue to pray for him more than you criticize, encourage more than condemn, build up instead of tear down. It will take a lifetime for God to change us all, molding us all into that someone better that we are looking for.
When I finally made the choice to thank God for where he had placed me and bloom wherever I was transplanted, I found joy and peace. Not quickly, not overnight, and not without struggles, but I became free to focus on the many delightful people that God brought into our lives and kick out the monster of envy. As Paul writes, “…I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances.” Philippians 4:13
Rest and rejoice in the knowledge that Jesus has you in the right place, right now. His ways are not our ways, but they are good. Even if it feels as if God has dropped or forgotten you, the fact is, He has not. Cry out to him, for the ability to love better and bolder, anticipating and enjoying the ways that you and your husband are becoming one.
Love, Mom
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