Someone once told me that there comes a time when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain brought on by change. I took this to mean look for your pain and find the easy way out. So I signed the divorce papers and changed my life, but never considered that maybe this actually meant that I needed to change. One of the phrases we often hear around church is that once we commit to being a follower of Christ, that God will change us from the inside out. But we still have to allow the change, move with the change and adjust to the change.
When I divorced, God didn't let go. I moved into my "new and improved" life and spiraled downward until I hit bottom. Of course at this point in time I didn't know God. God was not in my marriage or particularly in my life. I had this view of God. If you had asked me, I would have said I knew God, but I was not in relationship with him. So here is what I learned – you need God. Ah! So I guess this not a great epiphany. We all need God in our lives, but in some ways we need God even more once we are married.
The challenge of living with another person day-in and day-out deepens our need for God. There is an old cliche about two is company but three is a crowd. Wrong. Two is a marriage; three (when the third entity is God) is a good marriage, maybe a great marriage. Without God, the first bump makes you think maybe I should get out. A major crisis and the door is looking mighty good. So with God in the picture, you have an interesting option when life turns sour. God is your lifeline. God you can turn to. God you can go to. And, yes you can even ask God to change you. To lift your burdens, to change your emotions and to help you understand. God gives us grace. He accepts us with all our failings and wants to be in relationship with us. Why? How is it that we are lovable to God? And, how is it that we can’t show this same grace to people in our lives? How do we forgive, how do we show grace, how do we accept – we ask God to change us. That’s how.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
First Thoughts
Expectations. I think for women expectations can be the devils playground. We form these ideas in our head how things will be, what they’ll look like, what we’ll look like, how a situation will go and then we are disappointed when it doesn't happen exactly as we envisioned. This even goes for life. No matter how you are raised, you pretty much have an expectation to unite with someone, get married, maybe have kids – oh there will be ups and downs – but mostly ups, because we’ll be different, our love will be real. It’s my expectation – visions of sugar plums dance in our heads….
But what if, what if our well-defined unspoken expectations don’t happen exactly as we envisioned? All the chick flicks, TV shows and romance novels tells us that marriage is full of bright, sunshine days and even when it’s bad, it gets is good laugh and in "30 minute sitcom-time" all is resolved. Is this how marriage really plays out?
In a recent sermon, our senior pastor talked about the constant push to take the easy way out. How at times God takes us into the wilderness, where we wander sometimes feeling lost or alone. There are usually escapes – quick exits that can be taken. But these quick exits also usually include compromises, moral or otherwise, that are not healthy to our spiritual life and certainly won’t keep our feet planted on our walk with God. So I started pondering marriage. What if your marriage is feeling like wilderness. What if you are wandering it alone? What if your expectations are not being met? What then?
I never really had a realistic view of marriage. I was raised by a single mom after my father was killed in action. From the stories she told, marriage was pretty much stress-free. My father was funny and smart and a good provider, if he ever got drunk (which was very rare) he would dance with a lampshade on his head and at the end of the 'sitcom' half-hour he would go to bed and wake up in the morning to love my mother and his family. Other facts I know to be true about my father (well at least mom never told me otherwise) are his feet didn’t smell, he never passed gas or belched, he picked up his clothes, lifted the toilet seat and closed the cover, wiped the kitchen counters, never started a project that he didn’t finish, mowed the lawn regularly, didn’t channel surf, didn’t watch sports in his underwear, didn't swear or snore. Perfect picture of a husband...alrightly then... my expectations are all set now.
So when I hit my teens and twenties and started dating, I knew what I was looking for, how he would be, that we’d get married, have two kids, a white picket fence and there was life in a nice little package. My a little more than colorful dating past and little less than colorful first marriage will have to wait for future posts, but back to marriage. Deep within us, we want to be connected. Connected to another person – that person who understands us, loves us…even likes us above all others. God did not make us to walk alone, we are meant to be with others. Our desire for marriage is similar to our need for food. It’s part of our design. But were we ever promised that it would be easy, that it would meet all our expectations? Can we really expect that other person to complete us, fulfill us, make us whole? Or maybe that is too much to ask, maybe we aren’t even asking for that. Maybe, we’d just like him to get up off the couch and voluntarily empty the trash.
The days will come where you look at your spouse and ask why? Why did I marry you? Why did you come into my life? Why did my life turn out this way? Why do you continue to wear those shorts or that shirt? So where do we go from here? And how do we not take the easy way out?
It is somewhat amazing how much time we can spend thinking about ourselves, our needs, our wants, our desires. God created marriage for men and women. In part, marriage if successful forces us out of our own selfishness. The foundation of marriage is sacrifice. It’s laying down our desires, our plans and our will, for the sake of another. It is loving another unconditionally…even when they don’t deserve it, or they snore, or they don’t wipe the kitchen counter and they wear that shirt yet again. We all fall so short of what we are meant to be, what God intended for us. Maybe we just have to allow our spouses to fall short of our expectations…after all they are our expectations, not theirs...
But what if, what if our well-defined unspoken expectations don’t happen exactly as we envisioned? All the chick flicks, TV shows and romance novels tells us that marriage is full of bright, sunshine days and even when it’s bad, it gets is good laugh and in "30 minute sitcom-time" all is resolved. Is this how marriage really plays out?
In a recent sermon, our senior pastor talked about the constant push to take the easy way out. How at times God takes us into the wilderness, where we wander sometimes feeling lost or alone. There are usually escapes – quick exits that can be taken. But these quick exits also usually include compromises, moral or otherwise, that are not healthy to our spiritual life and certainly won’t keep our feet planted on our walk with God. So I started pondering marriage. What if your marriage is feeling like wilderness. What if you are wandering it alone? What if your expectations are not being met? What then?
I never really had a realistic view of marriage. I was raised by a single mom after my father was killed in action. From the stories she told, marriage was pretty much stress-free. My father was funny and smart and a good provider, if he ever got drunk (which was very rare) he would dance with a lampshade on his head and at the end of the 'sitcom' half-hour he would go to bed and wake up in the morning to love my mother and his family. Other facts I know to be true about my father (well at least mom never told me otherwise) are his feet didn’t smell, he never passed gas or belched, he picked up his clothes, lifted the toilet seat and closed the cover, wiped the kitchen counters, never started a project that he didn’t finish, mowed the lawn regularly, didn’t channel surf, didn’t watch sports in his underwear, didn't swear or snore. Perfect picture of a husband...alrightly then... my expectations are all set now.
So when I hit my teens and twenties and started dating, I knew what I was looking for, how he would be, that we’d get married, have two kids, a white picket fence and there was life in a nice little package. My a little more than colorful dating past and little less than colorful first marriage will have to wait for future posts, but back to marriage. Deep within us, we want to be connected. Connected to another person – that person who understands us, loves us…even likes us above all others. God did not make us to walk alone, we are meant to be with others. Our desire for marriage is similar to our need for food. It’s part of our design. But were we ever promised that it would be easy, that it would meet all our expectations? Can we really expect that other person to complete us, fulfill us, make us whole? Or maybe that is too much to ask, maybe we aren’t even asking for that. Maybe, we’d just like him to get up off the couch and voluntarily empty the trash.
The days will come where you look at your spouse and ask why? Why did I marry you? Why did you come into my life? Why did my life turn out this way? Why do you continue to wear those shorts or that shirt? So where do we go from here? And how do we not take the easy way out?
It is somewhat amazing how much time we can spend thinking about ourselves, our needs, our wants, our desires. God created marriage for men and women. In part, marriage if successful forces us out of our own selfishness. The foundation of marriage is sacrifice. It’s laying down our desires, our plans and our will, for the sake of another. It is loving another unconditionally…even when they don’t deserve it, or they snore, or they don’t wipe the kitchen counter and they wear that shirt yet again. We all fall so short of what we are meant to be, what God intended for us. Maybe we just have to allow our spouses to fall short of our expectations…after all they are our expectations, not theirs...
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