Thoughts on Marriage

If you would have asked the 15 year old me what my mission was in life, I was have told you flat out, “I want to get married.” I started writing letters to my husband at around that age, sealing them up in little envelopes. Most of them boasted self pitying remarks such as, “I can’t believe I actually found someone to love me!” I would tell you to ask Paul to verify this fact, but he doesn’t have these letters in his possession, not since I handed them out to my first boyfriend when I was 17 because I was pretty sure that I was going to marry him. Why not?

I loved Paul from a very early point in our relationship. But I think it’s safe to say that I relied far more on God’s will than my emotions. My emotions said, “run away, this is just too good,” but one day I seriously got down on my knees and I cried. I told God that if this is not His will, I needed to know right then. And for the first time in my entire life, I heard the voice of the Lord. I heard the words “Mark 7” spoken right to my heart. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard God’s voice that clearly since that moment. But I ran to my Bible, opened it to Mark 7 and began to read what Jesus taught about marriage. And the wheels starting spinning in my head as I sat on the couch with the Bible open in my lap. You mean, Paul’s the one?…You want me to marry Paul, don’t you?…I am in a relationship with the man I am going to marry. The thought swirled around in my head, and I wept. I don’t remember God speaking again, but it was almost like he was nodding in my spirit, nudging me along to the realization. Did I believe Him? Sort of. I asked for a “sign” about every day. Because even the most spiritual moment of my life up until that point, I doubted it. So I would say, “God, would you just show me one more time that Paul is the one?,” and sometimes He would, and sometimes He wouldn’t. One day I had the Bible on my lap and God told me to read James. I was so young in my walk then, I had to go to the table of contents to find out if James was even a chapter in the Bible. I doubted my hearing abilities. I doubted that Paul could be the one. But as I read James God opened my eyes to the double minded man, the one who asked for wisdom and then doubted. And so I didn’t doubt His word to me anymore because I knew He’d answered my question.

So now I have been married for going on 4 years. If you read my journal on the fourth day of my marriage to Paul, you will see that I had already decided that I wanted out. You see, Paul and I met online so we had never spent time together in person before we were married, not more than a week or so at a time. Leading up to our wedding he was in North Carolina for a month but we were living in separate houses, and I was in school full time, also taking care of Jake. Only one day home from our honeymoon I learned that Paul liked to open up all of the windows in a house while blaring music. While he had basketball on the TV in the background. I abhor loud music. And basketball. And bugs. So I found myself asking him nicely to turn the music down, turn the sports off, close our windows. He said no. Then I made my way to the bathroom and I cried. I wrote in my journal, this is not how I thought being married would be like. Sometimes that statement rings as unbelievably true in my heart even today. Because this is hard for me. No matter how much I want to believe that we are becoming one, I still feel very much like I am my own person. And he is his.

Paul and I are happily married. We love one another, and for the most part, we have the same vision for our lives (I would throw some colorful foster children into the family mix right now, but Paul wants to wait). We have surrendered ourselves to God and on some days that’s all we have. We said the day we got married, “we don’t believe in divorce.” We don’t believe that divorce is an option. It isn’t. Still, I was thinking today how hard it is to be married. Paul and I got in a “discussion” this morning because I had a dream that someone from my past came back around, not even an ex-boyfriend, just a friend. In my dream I wasn’t with Paul anymore. That in itself freaked me out, so like an idiot I thought Paul would want to hear about it. But Paul’s feelings were hurt because he thought maybe there was some underlying reason that I would dream about someone else. So he decided not to talk to me for awhile. I was hurt by that because it’s not like I can help having a dream, and all I can do is say that I love him. That I would never leave him. He works in a place where “perfect 10’s” come in on a daily basis. He says that he would never leave me. Sometimes I am so struck by the fragility of someone’s words. That word called trust is so elusive, one minute it means everything to me, and the next I wonder if it’s enough for either of us. I’ve been researching tattoos today. I want to get my wedding ring tattooed on with Paul’s initials underneath it. I had another idea to get P + S inside my current heart tattoo, and have Ruth 1:16-17 written underneath (the reference, not the verse!). How can Paul know with all of his heart that I will never go anywhere?

Marriages are crumbling around me. Everywhere. People married for 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, they call it quits. They justify it with all of their hearts and as I sit here saying, “I don’t believe in divorce,” I have to wonder if they said those very words the day of their wedding, but just found a greater truth to believe in. People with the word of God written on their hearts will quit just the same as those with no reason to make it work. That is incredibly frightening in the heart of this 25 year-old newlywed.

I pray to God that there is hope for Paul and I. My new habit is to say “God, I pray a blessing on my marriage in Jesus’ name” every time the enemy plants division, offense, or doubt in my heart about my husband. Anytime I have trouble tracking down passion that I once knew, I will pray over my bed, and ask God that He’ll bless our intimacy. I am convinced that without God, marriage is near impossible.  I also like to think of the Paul that God loves, and it helps me remember that God has an amazing plan for my husband's life and it makes me just want to stand tall next to him. I read one of those little one liners on Pinterest that said, “Being married is like having a sleepover with your best friend every night,” and I thought to myself, what kind of idiot wrote that? Now I am going to have to apologize to God for my more than pessimist view, especially since He chose marriage to be the expression of His love for the church. I am the bride of Christ. I made a pretty crappy bride if you ask me. Don’t think I’m unloading on Paul here, I am definitely a difficult person to live with. I guess I should be grateful that Paul tells me on a daily basis that marriage isn’t about me being happy, it’s about me obeying a covenant that I made before God.

I guess I should be grateful that I am happy.
I love being married, to Paul. I am blessed to have a “good as gold” husband in my midst! I was just thinking today, drawing out tattoo sketches (right before I read that I’m not supposed to get one while pregnant…and I HATE being patient, one of my less than par traits), that getting something permanent on my body isn’t going to be enough to keep my marriage going. Or give Paul any reassurance. It has to be written on my heart. It has to be how I live out my promise on a daily basis: learning to forgive, learning to submit (to Paul and to God!), and trusting that God definitely knew what He was talking about when He told me that Paul was the one He set aside for me. I never think, ‘I want a divorce.’ I just get overwhelmed sometimes, that we are in this for the long haul here and all I have is his word. And all he has is mine. That is profound and incredibly frightening at the same time, I think. And that some of this isn't going to be based on emotion as much as it is my choice to live up to my word, on the easy days and the hard ones.

                                            Ruth 1:16-18 (scripture from our wedding)
16 But Ruth replied, "Don't ask me to leave you and turn back. Wherever you go, I will go; wherever you live, I will live. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God. 17 Wherever you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord punish me severely if I allow anything but death to separate us!"