He makes it easy...repost

Marriage.

That has been the topic of several of my posts lately. It’s been the subject of several conversations between my husband and myself lately. And it’s been the topic of a few conversations I’ve had with other people.

The last post I wrote on marriage started out to be a post where I was going to give Scripture verses on marriage. My only aim was to gather together verses that showed that Biblical marriage shouldn’t need a book written by a fallen person to tell you how to be happily married. It was as much for myself as for anyone that might read it. But what I intended it to be isn’t what it turned out to be. The same night I wrote that post I was lying in bed thinking about…marriage. More precisely I was thinking about Biblical marriage and what it is and what it stands for.

Basically I was thinking about the post I had intended to write and didn’t. And then those thoughts shifted from thinking of verses on marriage to what marriage is from a Biblical perspective. Ephesians 5:22-23 says:

Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior.

The more I thought about that verse the more I began to think…Here Scripture plainly gives instructions to husbands and wives. In two sentences He sets the foundation for the entire marriage relationship. But He does more than that, so much more.

He says wives are to submit to their husbands but we’re not going to focus on that just now. I’m going to set it aside for a moment and come back to it later. I want, instead, to look at the next sentence, the instructions to husbands. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior.

Here Scripture likens the relationship between a husband and a wife to that of Christ and the Church. The husband is the head of the wife. What does that mean? In worldly terms we would see it as a ruler or leader. To be the head of something is to rule over it.

I knew someone a couple of years ago that saw marriage exactly that way. This person was a professing ‘Christian’, someone that knew Scripture well. This person’s view was that the husbands place was to rule over the wife. That the wife was to account to the husband for everything, to let him know where she was at every moment, where she was going, what she was doing. She was to do anything He told her to no matter what it was. That was how they saw the verses in Ephesians 5.

But…is that what Paul meant when he was giving those instructions?

If we look to Galations 5:22-23 we are told what the fruit of the Spirit is…

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, ²³ gentleness and self-control…

Could a man whose personality was that of the fruits of the Spirit be the kind of husband that ruled over his wife the way the person I described above believed it did? If a man is truly regenerate, if he’s seeking Christ with all that he is, if the fruits of the Spirit are in him…would he be the type of husband that rules over his wife?

I don’t believe he could be. Not only would he not want to be but it quite simply wouldn’t be in him to be able to be that sort of husband. His personality simply would not be the type that would let him act that way toward his wife. Nor would his relationship with Christ let him treat her that way.

Instead…I believe that a truly regenerate man would be a completely different kind of husband. One that treated his wife first with love. His whole relationship with her would revolve around that. It would flow out of the love he has for Christ and the love he has for her.

His relationship with her would be so simple and yet very complex. Not because of the relationship between the couple but because of what it is, of what he is. Here is a man that is living for Christ. He’s denying himself, taking up his cross, striving daily to live according to Biblical standards. He knows that the two most important commandments are…

And He said to him, "'YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND.' 38"This is the great and foremost commandment. 39"The second is like it, 'YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.'…Matthew 22:37-39

So if this man…this husband…is living for Christ then he’s trying hard to follow those two commandments. He strives to put Christ first in everything, loving Him with all that he is, and he’s loving his neighbor as himself.

What is his wife?

She is his neighbor. Not only that but, if she’s regenerate, she’s also his sister in Christ. Would a man that’s loving his neighbor as himself rule over his wife? Or would he love her as himself, treat her the way Christ has set forth in Scripture that we are to treat one another?

But that wasn’t the part that made me catch my breath and just…pause. It wasn’t what struck me as awe inspiring, as wondrous, as…something I can’t even describe. That didn’t happen until I got to thinking about how marriage is to be an example of the relationship between Christ and the church.

What does that mean?

When the answer to that question came to me I caught my breath. My thoughts, my very being paused and just marveled at the wonder of the marital relationship. Because you see…I was simply amazed by what came to me. I knew well all the verses on marriage, knew that the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the Church but…

When I fully saw in my mind what that meant…it was simply awe inspiring. Because when we look at what Christ was to the Church…in its simplest form…He was the savior, He sacrificed and gave for the church, He loved the church.

Ephesians 5:25-26 goes on to tell us…

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for herto make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word,

            Those two verses say to the husband…be to her what I was to the church. Give yourself up for her. Cleanse her. Christ was the savior. He gave his life for her.

            As I write this…I’m struggling. You see I simply can’t put into words what I understood that night. I can’t show in words what I felt. No matter what I write it just isn’t showing what I want it to.

You see nothing I’ve written so far was new to me; nothing I’ve said brings the same awe I felt that night. I simply can’t get that feeling, those thoughts, to take on the awe that flowed through me as I thought of what marriage truly is when simply looked at in the light of Scripture. I have, in my husband, what I believe to be a wonderful example of what a Christian husband should be. After Christ it’s me and our children that he lives for.

Without me saying a word to him, not all that long ago, he gave up something that bothered me. I never told him I didn’t like when he did it. Never asked him to give it up. But somehow he knew and he gave it up. Just like that. For me. I can’t even describe what that meant to me. He was attuned enough to me to know how I felt about it and then he gave it up. For me. Out of his love for me.

To me…he is a living example of the kind of husband that Scripture describes. How can I not want to be the kind of wife Scripture describes?

. Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord.

I am blessed to have a husband that doesn’t make demands on me. He doesn’t require much of me. I have tried always to be the submissive wife Scripture says I should be and I have a husband that makes that easy, not only because he doesn’t put a lot of demands on me but because the way he treats me makes me want to please him, to submit to him.

I’ve tried hard to make sure that I have been that kind of wife. Recently I wasn’t, although I truly didn’t mean to not be. I didn’t hear something my husband said and as a result I did something that he saw as going against him. That wasn’t my intention but the result was the same. Without any intention on my part I hurt my husband. Because I, without knowing it, chose something that went against him. I would never have done that if I’d heard what he said but I didn’t hear him and I hurt him. I regret that it happened but good came out of it. Because of that incident we were able to discuss it. Hearing him tell me how it affects him when I am not the kind of wife I should be made me want all the more to be that kind of wife. Because I don’t want to hurt him.

My husband has not failed to be the kind of husband Scripture says he should be but if he ever did I can well imagine the hurt and shock I would feel. Mainly because it would be so out of character for him that I wouldn’t know what to do. Because he is the way he is, I am able to totally depend and rely on him. I know I can trust him with all that I am. He leads me in so many different ways.

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.^a 28In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, 30because we are members of his body. Ephesians 5:25-30

This passage sums up a good part of the awe that flowed through me that night. Here is the foundation for what the husband is to be to the wife. He’s to love her as Christ loves the church. He’s to give himself for her, to sanctify her. He is to nourish and cherish her in the same way that Christ does His church.

My husband is the head of me as Christ is the church. He is to sanctify me. He is to give for me.

I have not asked that of him. I have not required it or demanded it. But the Lord has. And my husband does it. Because it is who he is. Because it is what the Lord asks of him. Because I have been entrusted into his care by the Lord.

Because my husband does all that for me he makes it easy for me to do what is required of me. I am to submit to him as to the Lord and…

… let the wife see that she respects her husband. Ephesians 5:33

I am to respect my husband. How can I not respect him when he does so much for me? And that is when the awe set in. It’s when I saw what I never have before. My husband leads me, in life, in Scripture, in everything. He leads me even in the little things that I would never have thought of. Because of my husband I have learned I need not even watch for things like ants in our path as we walk through the yard because he steers me around them. He cares for me in such a way that I can fully trust him in everything. He leads, I follow. He loves me and I know it. He watches out for me physically, emotionally, financially…in every way there is to be looked after, he looks after me. And it’s beyond precious to me.

Before we married I told my sister that if I wound up not marrying him he was setting a very high standard for anyone else to fill. I didn’t know yet at that point just how high he would set that standard. Today my husband told me I’m spoiled. He said it because I told him I was going to miss him because he was going to be working away from home. But he’s right. I am spoiled. And not just because I’m used to him working at home, used to him being with me all the time. I’m spoiled because in everything he does he leads me. He sets an example for me in the way he lives. He leads me when we discuss Scripture. He cares for me in so many little ways that I can’t help but feel loved and taken care of. When challenges arise in our life it’s me and our children he worries about.

How could I not respect him?

And why would I ever not want to submit to him?

Which brings me back to the awe that still fills me when I think of it. My husband in his given role… leads me, loves me, and cares for me in such a way that I know he loves and cherishes me. He nourishes me physically, spiritually, emotionally, mentally. If he is an example of the way Christ treats the church…he is a good one. I may be the only one that ever sees or feels it but I feel it strongly. I feel it daily.

Because my husband treats me the way he does I feel his love and care and I respond. I heard a preacher once say that a woman will follow her leader. And I’ve been given a good leader. I want to follow him.

Titus 2:4 says a wife is to love her husband. How could I not love my husband when he is so careful of me? Several months ago our children had the unfortunate experience of being exposed to spousal abuse. That night they asked me what I would do if my husband were to hit me. I assured them that would never happen. That didn’t seem to satisfy them because they then asked ‘but what if he did.’ I told them I knew he never would. When they still asked ‘but what if’ and ‘how do you know’ I told them I knew because of how he treats me, because he’s so careful with me.

If my husband, as the head of me, is a representation of Christ, then I am a representation of the Church. I am to my husband what Christians are to Christ. And there was the awe. It was the moment that I caught my breath and froze. It was the moment that made me see fully what I never have before.

Because my husband leads me in such a kind, gentle, and loving way that I know I can entrust all that I am to him…I want to follow him. And I try hard to show him that I love him. That I respect him. That I honor him by submitting to him.

I do it not because it’s required of me but because I want to.

I grew up seeing marriages that weren’t even close to being based on Scripture. I never…until I married my husband…experienced what I call Biblical marriage, a marriage based on Biblical principles. I know that my husband isn’t Christ. He isn’t perfect as Christ is. But he is the head of me as Christ is the head of the church. I’m not perfect either but my role is simpler. I’m not told to lead, I’m not to be the head, all I have to do is follow. To trust and support my husband and follow where he leads me. I am to submit to him as I do to the Lord. Thankfully I have been given a husband that I can fully trust and that makes it easy for me to be submissive to him.

I can see clearly in my marriage what Scripture means by…

… she is free to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord.. 1 Corinthians 7:39

I don’t read the New Living Translation of the Bible but I used an online Bible to make sure I worded that verse right and saw the NLT version along with the one I chose. I think it gives another, just as powerful example of that verse.

she is free to marry anyone she wishes, but only if he loves the Lord.

Marriage, for a Christian, is to be in the Lord. It is to be focused on the Lord. A woman may marry but she is to marry a man that loves the Lord. How powerful is that statement. How much does it set the standard for what marriage should be. It is to be Christ centered. As both husband and wife strive to live for Christ, they will fulfill their roles in marriage.

The husband is the leader, the provider, the caretaker of his wife.

The wife is the support, the helpmeet, the helper.

He leads. She follows.

Just as Christ leads His church and she follows.

What a powerful statement that is. What a powerful relationship. What a powerful example a couple married, in the Lord, presents to the world, to their children.

In light of all that a marriage, in the Lord, is…

Why would I ever not want to love, respect, and submit to my husband?

 

Biblical marriage...repost

Bible study amazes me in that not only do we learn more and more of our Lord every time but that certain things catch our attention on any given day. Something that may not have earned so much as a pause in our reading yesterday may stick out above all else today. Christ telling people to sell everything to follow Him was one of those things that popped out at me just last month.

This month it’s something completely different. Last month I watched a movie on the book of Ruth. It held pretty close to Scripture and was enjoyable to watch. But something in it stood out to me. I don’t remember exactly what was said it but it was something to the effect of God preparing Ruth for Boaz. That got me thinking but it wasn’t until I switched from the New Testament to the Old that I really started seeing the verses, the stories, about marriage. I wasn’t looking for them but there they were.

From the very beginning we see God’s hand and plan in marriage.

Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.  So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.  And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.  Then the man said,

“This at last is bone of my bones

and flesh of my flesh;

she shall be called Woman,

because she was taken out of Man.”

Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

Genesis 2:18-24

There isn’t much said about their marriage. We’re left with only our own thoughts and speculations on what life was like for them. Adam was created not in the Garden of Eden but out of it and placed inside it later. At some point after that God put him to sleep and used his body to create Eve.

This wasn’t just any woman. This was a woman made from his body and created just for him. She was designed by God to belong to Adam. When Adam awoke and was presented with his new wife. Adams response… “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. He didn’t look at her and say ‘hmm, there’s a woman’ or ‘that one will do’ or ‘why God? I’d have rather lain around and not have to put up with her.’ No. He said ‘at last.’ The implication there is that he waited for her. He wanted a wife. A helper. A partner.

Now instead of being alone he had a wife. They were two people joined in marriage so that they were one flesh. This is a joining of mind, body, and soul. And they were dependent on each other. Where he was weak she was strong. Where she was weak he was strong. They were two and yet…one.

There they were in what amounted to paradise. They had everything and yet by our standards today…they had nothing but each other. They had no house, no car, no instant entertainment. They didn’t even have clothes. How much would they have bonded and clung to each other when they had nothing else? Can you imagine being the only two people in the world? How attached and dependent would you be on that other person?

Adam and Eve had each other and they had God. Not just in thought and Spirit but walking and talking with them. He was there to give them instruction, to show them what He expected from them but when He left them alone…they had each other.

That was the first marriage God created. And He did create it. He didn’t just bring them together. He made them for each other.

That is the first marriage He made. It is the example we should look to.

Scripture brings us many more marriages. Genesis alone shows us Abraham and Sarah, Noah and his wife, Noah’s sons and their wives, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachael. We don’t get very much insight into what their marriages were like. We know that Sarah called Abraham Lord and that they were still close enough to conceive a child in their old age. We know the world was repopulated from the eight people, four married couples, that were on the ark during the flood.  We know Isaac was willing to work for fourteen years to claim the woman he loved as his wife.

These are only a handful of marriages scattered throughout Scripture. There are so many more. The very fact that there are so many marriages in Scripture should tell us the Lord puts importance on it.

Over and over in Scripture marriage is mentioned. Couples are referenced.  An internet search turns up the fact that marriage is mentioned 19 times in the Bible. A search on the word wife shows that it appears either 396 times or 407 times. I couldn’t find a number count for the word husband. Even allowing for errors in counting, different translations and anything else that might affect the word counts the number of times wife is mentioned is pretty impressive.

But what were these marriages like? Our minds tend to see them as we see marriage today. Some good, some bad, some awful. And I’m sure they were. People were people no matter when they lived. Sin takes hold of all of us no matter how hard we try not to let it. We’re human. We fail. We say things we shouldn’t. Do things we shouldn’t. Hurt those we love. That wasn’t any different just because the times were different.

But what did those marriages look like?

Have you ever noticed that marriages lasted for centuries in ways they don’t today? Part of that is the social stigma of being divorced. Even well into the 1900’s saying you were divorced carried a burden of shame with it. But there was another side to it. The simple fact was there was a time when men needed women and women needed men.

In times past a woman had no way of supporting herself or providing for her children if she wasn’t married. There were few opportunities for employment available to women, and when they were…if she had children what was she supposed to do with them if she worked outside the home? Who would care for them?

Men had few if any domestic skills and less time for doing things like cooking and cleaning even if they had the ability to do them. If they had children, especially small children, they were ill equipped to care for them. It was hard to work a field, or tend animals with a baby in their arms.

Life was separated into men’s work and women’s work. Husbands had a role, wives had a role. And marriages happened as often out of sheer need as they did out of love. Life was just harder alone than it was when you were married.

Then the LORD God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” Genesis 2:18

Our modern society has taken the need for marriage away. Women can and do support themselves and their children. Men can cook and clean or they can throw something in the microwave. A single parent of either sex can drop their children off at daycare and not need to worry about them while they work. The need that held husbands and wives together has disappeared.

We can’t know what Biblical marriages looked like but we can know that the Lord had a plan for it in the beginning and He has a plan for it today. We know He gave certain roles to women and certain roles to men. He is the provider. She the caretaker. He is the protector. She the nurturer.

What if we simply stayed in the roles the Lord created us for? What if we realized that the Biblical model of marriage is good and tried to follow it? What if when we started questioning whether marriage was good we turned to Scripture? What if we looked at examples like Adam and Eve and saw that they stuck together through everything? What if we looked at marriages like Hosea and saw that they stuck it out when most would have walked away?

What if we looked at our husband and asked ‘what if God created me for him? What if I’m made ‘bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh’?

There is a secular movie that I saw years ago. It centers around a married couple as they work (and fight) together. A scene at the end of the movie shows a tornado heading their way. They take refuge in the only place that seems safe and is close enough to get to: a well house. With the tornado headed their way they lash themselves to the piping and hang on to it and each other. The tornado rips everything away and leaves them in the midst of a swirling mass that is churning angrily around them. As they’re bombarded with wind and debris swirls around them, you can see the churning tornado that is trying to suck them into it. But the pipes they’re anchored to hold fast and they’re swept into the air, hanging from their anchor, alone in a swirling storm that is surrounding them with trouble.

The Lord was kind enough to give me a Christian husband. Not just one that professes to know Christ but one that truly believes and follows the Lord, a man that denies himself for Christ, who puts others first, who is kind and humble. A man that I can see lives out Scripture every day. A man that is my safe place. Since our marriage we have been hit with many trials both big and small but with every one of them I have noticed that they’re easier to bear because we have each other. It’s easier to find a solution when we look for it together. It’s easier to bear the trials when we don’t have to bear them alone.

I haven’t watched that movie in years but the more trials that come our way the more I see my husband and I in the center of that tornado. We are the couple being blown and tossed about, Christ is the pipes that keep us anchored, that give us hope and strength to hang on, life is the tornado that swirls around us. But there in the middle of the tornado, my husband and I are anchored to the pipes, we have a firm foundation that keeps us rooted. We may be battered by the storms (trials) while the tornado of life surrounds us but we have each other in the midst of it.

And we have Christ.

Could that be what God had in mind when he created the first marriage?

One...repost

I recently wrote a series of posts on Adam and Eve. My intention with each of them was to put myself in their places for just a moment. It was my intention to imagine what life might have been like for them.

I wanted to know them. To imagine what might have gone through their heads and hearts at any moment. I wanted to feel what they might have felt.

I wanted, for a brief moment, to experience the awe they might have felt as they began their lives.

Now I’d like to take it just a little further. In the post I titled ‘What was it like for Adam and Eve?’ I got into what marriage might have been like for them.

But do we understand what that really meant? Do we even understand what marriage really means? Yes, we know the definition. Yes, we know what marriage is. But do we truly understand just what it is, what it represents? I’ve written on that before and yet I don’t feel I’ve done it justice. I don’t think I will ever do it justice.

Marriage is something I always considered sacred. I remember in my teens, when all my extended family treated marriage as something that was more or less disposable, my thoughts on it were different. And yet…I didn’t know why it was that I saw it that way. And as I got older my thoughts on marriage stayed the same. It was something sacred. It was something you don’t mess with. Even when I still didn’t understand why I felt the way I did, I knew that I felt that way. Deeply.

Today I understand why I feel the way I do. I understand why I think it’s sacred. Because it’s sacred to the Lord. It’s a representation of Christ and the church. It’s the forging of one person into two.

A few days ago my daughter told me that she had a dream that my husband and I got a divorce. She couldn’t tell me anything else about the dream because she woke up as soon as we got the divorce. For me her waking up was significant. I wake up when I have a dream that takes me somewhere that scares me or makes me uncomfortable. I believe that is why she woke up as soon as the ‘divorce’ happened. It was a scary or uncomfortable place for her.

I assured her that that was something that wasn’t going to happen. My husband told her it was something Christians don’t do. And the moment passed.

But the memory lingers. It was one of those brief discussions that happen and then they’re over but the effect can stay behind. I don’t, for a minute, believe that my husband and I will ever divorce. We are both too committed to the Lord to do that to Him much less to each other.

But as I think of what it would mean to divorce, I think of severing something that can never be healed. My husband is so much a part of me that he is much like my relationship with Christ. Without him, I’m not me. I wouldn’t want to live without him.

My husband is fond of saying ‘and the two shall become one’. He says that often. Until I married him I had no idea what that really meant. We have forged a bond that began with Christ and has spread out over our entire marriage.

There are so many aspects to our marriage. And in each one we have become one. There’s nowhere in my life where he isn’t welcome, nothing I won’t share with him, nothing I won’t tell him. And I’m that deeply ingrained in his life.

We are quite simply…one.

And out of that oneness comes a closeness I never thought possible until I married my husband.

It’s with that oneness in mind that I think of Adam and Eve’s marriage. It’s with that oneness that I wonder what the first marriage was like. It’s with that oneness that I imagine what life might have been like when you had your spouse and no one else.

I don’t plan to cover the same things I covered in that post on Adam and Eve, I simply wish to elaborate.  More precisely I want to capture a feeling that I’m not sure I can capture.

Oneness.

As I think of the children my husband and I created together, I think of that oneness. Not because of the physical relationship that created them but because of the becoming one in everything. The babies, in some way, are a representation of the oneness between my husband and I. It is the making of a whole new person through us. Because of my husband and I, our babies had life. It is a melding of the two of us much the way we have melded our lives together.

It took parts of him and of me to make them. The Lord took me and my husband, mixed them together and created a new person.

In a similar way the Lord took my life and my husband’s life and melded them together until we had one life not two.

I’ve seen marriage ceremonies where the couple lit a candle together, poured two different colors of water into the same vase, and poured two different colors of sand into one jar. With the candle, where there were two flames they create one. With the water…red and yellow made orange. And with the sand the two colors made layers that could never be separated again.

Of the things above my favorite was the sand. The candle left the two original flames and just created another. The colored water took two colors and made one. But the sand…it mixed the two different colors into layers where you could see both colors but melded them together in a way that you couldn’t separate the individual colors again if you tried. But it did something else too. The sand that was once in each bottle, solid colors that weren’t all that nice to look at by themselves, layered together to create something interesting that could keep you looking at it for a good long time. It took the ordinary and made it extraordinary. It took two, mixed them together and left the same two but better than they were before.

My husband and I did none of those things at our wedding. We didn’t need to. Those things were only an outside representation of what was happening with our lives. The Lord took the two of us, once completely separate people, and layered us together so that the two of us still exist but that we were mixed together in a way to create something new and better. Our hearts, minds, and souls have met and meshed.

Together we became the vessels the Lord used to give life to our children. Together we became the vessels the Lord used to represent something sacred. Together we became…

One.

Here to show His glory

There is something beyond miraculous in holding a brand new baby. When that new little life rests in my hands I hold not just a baby but a brand new soul. The Lord gives us such a blessing in those tiny new lives. I am pretty certain that I could happily spend the rest of my life holding a brand new baby. I've heard many people talk of their idea of paradise on earth...I think that just might be my idea of earthly paradise. A newborn baby.

In a newborn baby I see total innocence. Oh, I know what Scripture  says, these tiny new people are conceived in sin, born in sin. I know they still have human hearts that come preprogrammed for the life the Lord has assigned them. I know that. But...my human heart sees total innocence. I see the best of human life in them. I see...

Amazing miracles.

Holding a newborn baby is, for me, to hold all that is right in this world. It doesn't matter if the newborn baby is mine or someone elses, I get unspeakable joy from holding it. Although as someone once told me, there is nothing like holding your own baby.

I have told several people that "this is what I was born for" in reference to my children. They and my husband are my life. They are my reason for being here. They are my joy...my world...my life.

They are...my purpose.

Just today a relative was talking to me about my children and I said, "they are my purpose on earth. They are what I was born to do." After I said that, I got to thinking...

My family is my purpose, what I was born to do. I had to live so that my children can live. The Lord used me to give them life. There is no greater joy than loving and caring for my family. I say that but even as I write it I realize that there is the joy of Christ and yet...I cannot find a different way to write that. My family is my human hearts joy. They are my purpose. My fulfillment. My happiness. My...joy on earth. They are in one catagory, Christ another. I cannot find a different way to describe my joy in my family except to say there is no greater joy than caring for and loving them. They are all that I am, all that I want to be, all that I ever wanted in life.

They are what I was born to do.

Literally. I dreamed of having babies and a husband when I was little more than a baby myself. I longed for them when I was much to young to have them. I hoped for them. Prayed for them. Begged the Lord for them.

They are the reason I am here. In my mind anyway. And yet...

As I told someone that I couldn't help thinking that the Lord's only reason for putting me here could have been to make me one of His own. He may simply have put me here to show His glory rather by using me for good or for bad (Romans 9). That thought got me to thinking further. I was born so that I could have the family I have now, that's what I truly believe in my heart and in my mind, but then my thoughts turned to the people that the Lord used me to bring into this world. I do not know how the Lord will use them on this earth or where He will place them in eternity. But He will use them and He will give them an eternal home. They were born for a purpose too. I was merely the vessel the Lord used to get them here. I get the earthly blessing of loving them but He gets the eternal glory for having created them because in the end, and in the beginning to,  we are all here to show His glory.

Taking a break from marriage...repost

I saw a headline in the news today that had me mentally scratching my head in wonder and sort of...well, wondering, how in the world anyone could do what the headline said. And so, with much reservation I pulled the article up and proceeded to actually read it. At least that was my intention but the content of the article left me skimming it and then wishing I hadn't.

The whole thing was about sexual sin. It was about a woman that had been married for 18 years that began to be disillusioned, she said she knew she was about to have an affair and wanted to be fair to her husband. To her, being fair meant telling him she intended to have an affair. At least that's the impression I got. The end result was that she and her husband decided to stay married but would essentially only be married on the weekends, that's my take on things, not how the article worded it. The woman lived in an apartment during the weekdays doing anything she wanted and living as if she weren't married then went back to her husband on the weekends and became a wife again. The result of such a lifestyle was nothing short of predictable...it didn't work out...they wound up divorced but the between time was a year of nothing short of sexual sin.

I can't help wondering though...how can anyone think they can take a break from being married? Can you take a break from being you? Really, truly, leave you behind and be someone else? Sure, you can pretend for a while to be something you're not but can you ever really separate yourself from ...yourself?

Can you take a break from being a mother? Even if your children aren't with you, once you become a mother, you're always a mother. I lost three babies to miscarriage in six months and every last one of those babies made an impression on me. They effected me. They changed who I was. Even without the baby that had such an effect on me...I could never separate myself from being their mother. I never held a living baby in my hands with any of them. I never saw their sweet smiles, kissed satiny cheeks, or felt tiny hands wrapped around my finger. But tiny lives that were gone way too soon to suit me left huge imprints in my heart and forever affected who I am.

Can you take a break from being a daughter? When I was in my teens I heard about a girl that was switched at birth. They made a movie of her life. That girl, if I remember correctly, was about ten when it came out that she didn't belong to the parents she loved. The courts and her biological parents forced her to live with, in what sort of arrangement I don't remember, her biological parents. When that girl became a teenager she divorced her biological parents, the people that in her mind had essentially stolen her from the parents she loved, and lived with the family she had grown up in. I could have some of the details here a bit mixed up but the thing is...even though that girl divorced those parents, their blood still ran through her veins. A blood test would show that she was there daughter. And even though the parents that had raised her for so long had no blood tie to her, the love she held for them made her their daughter even when the law said she wasn't. The law could not remove the daughter from either set of parents. Once the girl divorced the biological parents, I assume legally they were no longer considered her parents, yet a blood test would say they were. And the law removed the girl from the parents that had raised her but the same law could not remove the feelings and the relationships that made that girl the daughter of people she had no blood tie, or legal claim, to.

The reality is that we are a part of the relationships that make up our lives. I used to have a friend that I called the sister of my heart. She and I were that close. For five years we had a remarkable friendship. Then it just sort of fell apart and I can no longer call this woman a friend. And yet...the friendship remains. There is a place in my heart where this woman resides. I no longer have her friendship but I cannot erase it from my memories, or her from my heart.

My grandpa passed away several years ago. He is gone. No longer a part of my life. No longer there for me to call on the phone and hear his voice. No longer there to call me by the nickname only he ever used for me. No longer there to give me a hug. No longer there to sit and talk with me. He is gone. And yet...I'm still his granddaughter. I will always be his granddaughter. There are still places where people know me because they know me as his granddaughter. He is still a part of me because he was such a big part of my life.

I can't take any of those roles in my life away. My grandpa has been gone for years now but I am still his granddaughter. I am a daughter. I am a mother.

I am a wife.

If those other relationships are so much a part of me that I cannot separate myself from them...how much more so the relationship that makes me wife? Scripture says that man and woman are one in marriage, that they are no longer two people but one person. There is no other relationship on earth that holds that description. One flesh.

One together.

If my husband is away, be it to the store, at work, or anywhere else, for any reason, he is still my husband. I am still his wife. I have heard many times that a woman needs an identity outside of that of wife. That she needs to be someone other than her husbands wife. But I don't believe that for a minute. I cannot be someone outside of being my husband's wife. Just the other day, as I checked the mail, I thought of how women used to be Mrs. whatever their husbands name was. That is no longer the case. I can't remember the last time I heard a married woman referred to by her husband's name. Now a woman is Mrs. whatever her own name is. Her identity is no longer within that of her husband. I must say I wouldn't mind at all being called Mrs and my husbands name. It is, after all, who I am.

There is no being me without being my husband's wife. I cannot remove myself from any role I have in life. I am not me without being my children's mother. I cannot be me without being my mother's daughter, my sister's sister, my niece's aunt... And I sure can't be me without being my husband's wife.

How then could any wife just take a year off from being married? Or, which turned out to be the case in the woman's story I read about, take five days off from being a wife, live in those five days as if my husband didn't exist, or like I wasn't married to him, making choices and doing things that I knew would hurt him, then go home to him on the weekends and live as if I was his wife for two days before returning to a life without him.

Simply put...I am my husband's wife. Where I am, he is. Where he is, I am. That holds true no matter what we are doing, where we go, or how long we might be apart. He is a part of me and I am a part of him. There is no separating one from the other just as their is no separating me from my skin.

But this woman tried to do that very thing. And in the end she destroyed her marriage. I have no idea if she sees it that way although she did say she would not recommend any married woman do what she did if they want to stay married. I wonder...how she ever thought it would work?

I know she has to live a worldly sort of life, most likely embracing many ideas that our modern world tries to teach as acceptable, to do what she did. The idea, supposedly, behind her year off from marriage was to have as many or as few affairs as she wanted with no emotional connections. That just boggles my mind. I can't imagine anyone, let alone a wife, or husband, doing that, although I know that there are many that do that very thing regardless of whether or not they are married.

I wonder what she gained from those...encounters...that she couldn't gain with her husband? She gave up closeness, completeness, fulfillment...happiness...for temporary gratification. She had been married for eighteen years. Didn't that count for anything? I know that I have no idea what her marriage was like. For all I know it was the sorriest, awful-est, marriage in history. But it was her marriage. And she had to have had some sort of relationship with her husband. Even a bad relationship, it seems to me, would top an emotionless encounter, jumping from one person to the next for the simple reason of seeing what there was out there, on the other side of marriage.

And even if she could do all that...how in the world did she manage to remove herself from the role of wife to become a temporary diversion to someone that was looking for nothing more in a relationship than what she was offering...another man's wife?

What did her husband go through so that she could take a break from marriage?

I still can't grasp this concept. I know we live in a fallen world in a time when morals all but don't exist. I know the American divorce rate is somewhere around one out of every two marriages. I know that most married couples are unregenerate men and women that seek their own happiness and gratification even in the midst of marriage.

I have known many couples that were married, most of them had the husband and the wife going in separate directions most of the time and crossing paths at the end of the day and on the weekends. I've known married couples that slept in separate bedrooms, married couples that cheated on each other, husbands that beat their wives, wives that worked in strip bars, couples that lived in separate states because they didn't want to give up their jobs to live together. Every married couple has their own way of making their marriage work, even if working means their marriage really doesn't work, but...taking a break from marriage?

Why would anyone even think that was possible. If I lived apart from my husband, no matter the reason, I would still be his wife. I could no more remove my place in life as his wife than I could remove my need to breathe. It is what I am.

I am my husband's wife.

And yet it appears that there are people in this world that think they can try on the role of wife like one might try on a pair of shoes or a new dress. They might buy it, might wear it every day while it's their favorite, but when it gets old, or they get tired of it, they can set it aside and take a break from it.

And yet, Scripture says that the role of wife, or husband, is one unlike any other. It is given a distinct description. Comes with rules. It holds a near sacred place between men and women, one that Scripture says should be broken by no man...that would include the man, or woman, in the marriage. But some people think they can sit it aside at their will, try out the single life, play married life when it suits them, and it all be fine and good.

I wonder what this woman, a wife of 18 years, thought would be left of her marriage when her year 'off' was over. Did she expect to have the same relationship she had had before living a life of sexual sin, although I'm sure that description probably never crossed her mind? Did she expect her marriage would be better? Did she expect to be happy with her husband, and what he had to offer her, after picking and choosing between every available man out there? Did she think her year off from marriage was really going to remove her role as wife? Did she think it would make her a better wife? Did she think it would make her husband a better husband?

I don't know the answers to any of those questions but the article did say this woman wrote a book about her experiences. It's possible that the answers to those questions are in that book. I can say it is a book I will not be reading and those are answers I really don't need to know.

All I need to know is that wife isn't a role one that can be put on and taken off at whim. At least...it shouldn't be. And I imagine that even taking a break from being a wife, without sexual sin involved, would take it's toll on a woman, her husband, and their marriage. And what this woman did went far beyond that.

Marriage wasn't something I put on lightly. It wasn't a role I entered into with any thought of ever taking a break from. It wasn't a role I ever thought to take a break from, because just like I cannot take a break from being me, I cannot take a break from being my husband's wife. Even if I were to never see my husband again I would forever be his wife. That is simply something that cannot be removed.

I am my husband's wife.