Like I do so often, I wrote a post and felt like I need to expand it, just to solidify in my own head what it was I was trying to say.

You see, I really think that a stance of Divorce is not an Option will usually  produce a happier than average marriage. The reason I think that? My husband and I live it. Both of us grew up with parents who were genuinely happy to live together. I see our friends who have this same stance, and I know that they are happy.

Do we not ever irritate each other, are there no problems, no stressors that feel too big to make it through? Of course, we do and there are! There are times when marriage is a lot of hard work, when it feels too difficult to wade through the misunderstandings/differences. There are hormonal shifts, the ebb and flow of the heady honeymoon feelings. There is this thing called Life: one side of the coin is connubial bliss, love and acceptance, roses and chocolate. The other side is life with its brokenness and bills, sickness and babies… 🙂

Think of Life as a river, the water sometimes flowing deep and smooth, sometimes rippling gently, sometimes roaring over big rocks and around logjams. Marriage is the canoe that you got into with your partner, “until death do us part”. The canoe carries the two of  you into some of the most amazing places with breathtaking scenery, but occasionally you do get rudely dumped by some rogue wave that swamps your vessel. Maybe the person in the front of the canoe wasn’t watching for rocks or maybe the person steering in the back didn’t handle his paddle very skillfully and there you are in the water, wet and mad, trying to figure out who to blame.

What if the one partner says, “I have had enough of this! I am gonna walk along on the bank!”  Now that isn’t going to make for very harmonious canoeing. All the joy is gone from the river. The person stumbling through the brush on the bank is having very difficult progress, and the person in the canoe is needing his paddler/rock spotter back. No matter who is to blame, here is what you do. You apologize, you forgive, you dump the water out of the canoe, pick up your paddles, and climb back in.

(I know, I know, that analogy doesn’t hold up completely. Forgive me if you are a kayaker who is having a fine time on the river all by yourself.)

That sounds so simplistic, and it is. Maybe you say, “But don’t I deserve to be happy?” That is the (whiny) chorus that is rising all over our nation as couples split up over their incompatibilities. I think we have lost the way to true happiness. We  assume it is something to find, stumble upon, grab hold of, and hang onto no matter what it costs others.

Jesus said something counterintuitive about life, quality of life, that I think applies well to this question. “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.” Matthew16:25  So you want a good life? You want to be happy? You can start by losing your life for the sake of another. That is how you have a good life. Happiness comes from giving, not from some grasping search for that nebulous person that will make all your dreams come true.

One of the major stressors for us has been Gabe’s study. When he is in the books, he gets swallowed into this deep, deep cave where he apparently needs no sustenance or human companionship. As for me, there is this Utopian ideal where we  work the homestead side-by-side 24/7 and just kind of do life happily ever after, never mind everybody else. (Not really, but sort of. 🙂 )

We spent a summer at Faith Builders when Gabe was teaching school. Many days my husband studied 16 hours while I, 7 months pregnant, lived in a hot apartment with 2 little boys. We ate our meals in the dining hall. One day Gabe got so absorbed that he completely forgot about dinner. I waited and waited with two hungry little boys until everyone else had gone through the line.  Instead of doing the sensible thing and going through the buffet line for some food, I took it personally, went back to our apartment and cried. Don’t worry, we apologized, forgave, and got back into the canoe. 🙂

Knowing that nursing school would pose some of the same challenges, we went into it with our eyes wide open. Sometimes the grades suffered and sometimes the family life suffered. But we had lived out 8 years of this Commitment that we would work toward making life sweet and happy together, no bailout plan.  There is a lot of security in that: the two of us, for life! Was it hard? Yes. Did we ever feel overwhelmed? Pretty much every day. Both of us. Did we survive? Are we still in love? Oh yes! We did and we are!

For your information, there are better ways to get attention than crying, ladies. You can always try making a fabulous iced mocha to take to him in his cave. 😉

Think about it. If you know that this is the person that you are spending all of your life with, that is a huge motivation to invest your best into that life. Usually what you give will come back to you, whether that is sour looks and ugly words, or delighted smiles and affirmation. You might as well give it your best shot!

In my nest full of birdies, there is one who doesn’t gape his beak open as widely as the others, so I worry sometimes that he will fall through the cracks. When he is sick, he sits very quietly in a corner, demanding nothing more than to be left alone. He has always preferred to be quiet rather than blast his feelings around.

Last week he had a belly ache, and I found him scanning Gabe’s pharmacology textbook. I suppose he was trying to find a drug to help his condition? At any rate, I said, “Gregory, if you have questions, you can just ask Mama. This textbook is probably a little hard for an eight year old to understand.” 

He just looked down, grinned a little, so I probed, “Do you have questions now that you would like to ask?” 

“Well, I have some questions, but most of them I already know the answers to.” And that was all he would say. A little later he came to me with a paper, all folded up. “Here, Mama.”

Yes, he did copy them out of one of his favorite books, “Encyclopedia of Questions and Answers”. And yes, that was his idea of a joke. On the Stinker Scale, I would put that close to a ten.

Anniversary by Willow Tree

I banned my children from the pea rows. It was just too distressing to me to see them yank heartlessly on the vines, pulling off pods that weren’t filled out, wasting my precious peas. So I made them stay out. I picked my peas all by myself, and I thought long, long thoughts, mostly uninterrupted. 🙂

After that rather cavalier quote from “Just Do Something” about marriage, I kept the cogs turning. Marriage should, after all, never be jumped into lightly. It is irreversible. You can kid yourself that divorce ends it, but it doesn’t. Not in God’s eyes. This is not a popular idea today, even in the evangelical world if the stats are any indication. Fifty percent chance of staying together. That is what they say. That is rather dismal, I say.

So I was picking peas and thinking about this. We have been married nearly 12 years, half another time as long as the average American marriage. Nobody in my or Gabe’s ancestry, not grandparents or aunts or uncles or even cousins, has ever gotten a divorce. Until our parent’s generation, they were all Amish. How is it that they all stayed together in marriage all their lives?

I thought it must be one of three things…

• They are not as sinful as the average person. Well. We know that isn’t true. Many of our ancestors didn’t even have a solid grip on salvation, and they were definitely sinners.
• They are just naturally gifted with relationships. Excuse me while I take a little time for a private guffaw.
• Divorce is simply not an option.

I think that last one is it. I am not going to delve into the intricacies of whether those marriages were all happy or not, because I don’t know. I just know that I value tremendously that heritage of working it out, sticking it out, figuring it out as we live together.

If you want to know what to look for in a marriage partner, look for someone who is born again, submitted to Jesus. Then make sure that they are firmly committed to a lifetime of marriage, no matter what. Because obviously, this doesn’t work so well if only one of the partners hold marriage to be inviolable.

Somewhere I read that a great marriage is always between two people who are great forgivers. You don’t just throw in the towel because he won’t hang up his towel, if you get what I mean.

I don’t want this to be insensitive to those who have suffered the incredible pain of a partner who was unfaithful and left them. I cannot even imagine how difficult that must be.

I am just saying, “Kids, don’t chuck this one away!”

“A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.”

Mignon McLaughlin

Just a week ago tonight we got to share with our son the glorious news that he can trade in the burden of a guilty conscience before God for the joy of forgiveness and freedom. It was not a new idea to him. He knew. “I just can’t do what is right, and then I am so frustrated because of it, and it just gets worse. I think about it, but then I just push it away.” He wanted the new heart. We saw him struggle with the decision, knowing he understood, but it was his choice. And oh, joy! We got to witness the goodness of God leading him to repentance. It was so sweet, so simple, so amazing!

My son got a new heart that night. I find myself wanting to hover over him, just like I do over my new born babies. I look into his peaceful eyes and I thank Jesus! I hear him struggle to be kind to his siblings and I see that sometimes it is hard. He is just ten, but already the journey is full of choices.

Here is what I want him to know:

• Just walk in the light, Son. It is all about that! Jesus will always direct you in ways of light. Take care of the clouds immediately before they block out the sun.
• It is a long, hard road sometimes, this Way of a New Heart. Believe, no matter how fierce the struggle, that you are already the victor!
• You are never alone, Son. Never. When you can’t feel the presence of Jesus, find someone who can help carry you there.
• Don’t lose the wonder of no longer carrying that oppressive burden. Rejoice in the free life!

The list could go on. I don’t want to hover too much, but I do so yearn over my son, my newborn son! What would you say to your son?

• The state of the frying pan and the stove top after Gregory makes the eggs
• The way my linen shirts look after I forget to get them out of the dryer
• That moment when I finally discover what stinks in the basement
• The sensation of reaching right into a fat grandpappy slug in the strawberry patch
• The depravity of my heart without Jesus

And… switching gears a bit…

• The cup of tea and the moment of blissful quiet while children play with kittens, enough kittens for everyone without a single fight
• The realization that the child you thought would never learn, learned
• The overpowering affection for a small, squishy, sweet human, your very own miracle 
• The gratefulness for a green world, a warm and fruitful world
• The joy of a Redeemer who restores my soul

Whenever I do a book report, I start wondering, “What if people think I accept, unequivocally, everything in the book?” Because this is such a public forum, I thought maybe I should give a few disclaimers. 🙂 For your information, you should never read a book gullibly, just because someone else recommends it. But as the one recommending, I will give you a few reasons why Just Do Something impacted me so profoundly, as well as a few questions I have. 

One of the reasons it took me so long to read this book is because of the rather shocking, or should I say, illuminating way the author stated some of his thoughts. I read and reread and cogitated long. Take for example: “God doesn’t care what job you do, as long as you can do it in righteousness.” That “God doesn’t care” part had me stumped for a while. I thought God cares about all the details of our lives? But the longer I read, the more I understood what he was saying: Don’t wait around for years being idle, hoping your destiny will smack you in the face one day. Just do something.

The book is written with a huge emphasis on the sovreignty of God, (the author is a Calvinist) something I feel like I only dimly comprehend, yet which is tremendously comforting to me. I like to know things, understand them, ducks in a row, that sort of thing. I have whacked my head against the wall of the inscrutable. I have wailed WHY into an empty heaven and found no answers. Except the reality of Who God is, ever present. No matter what happens in the future, He is there! 

I suppose that is why this book impressed me, the emphasis that the God of the Universe is present in my daily circumstances, not some distant Deity who amuses himself while I try to figure out just exactly what He wants me to do. 

When I was younger, I had an opportunity to go on a short term mission trip to Africa. I pretty much drained all my resources paying for my ticket, paperwork, yellow fever shot, etc. The last week before we left, I found out about another expense, 55 dollars for a visa, or some such. Where was I going to get this money? Suddenly I remembered a jar of change I had on my dresser and I went to count it. It was 55 dollars and 55 cents.

I took that as a sign that God would be with me on our trip. And He was! But what I didn’t understand was that I didn’t really need a sign. As His child, I could simply lay claim to the outrageous promise, “Lo, I am with you always, even until the end of the world.” 

There have been many times in my life when God has been so kind as to reassure me of His presence through tangible ways. So I wasn’t quite sure about the chapter where he addressed signs and supernatural leading. I am still not quite sure. 🙂 However, I concur wholeheartedly with the warning that “God told me to do it,” (dreams, liver shivers, fleeces) in total disregard of the Bible, is a bunch of baloney. 

I read these verses last week…

The Lord taketh pleasure in them that fear him,

in those that hope in his mercy. Psalm 147:11

 

For the Lord taketh pleasure in his people:

he will beautify the meek with salvation. Psalm 149:4

 

The Lord takes pleasure in His people… not because they are always in the right place at the right time, doing the right thing. He takes pleasure in them because they are His righteous flavor on Earth, willingly presenting themselves to His service, whatever that may be.

I like that simplicity. What about you?

I finally finished the book that I bought for my own personal celebration at the end of the school year, “Just Do Something OR How to Make a Decision Without Dreams, Visions, Fleeces, Impressions, Open Doors, Random Bible Verses, Casting Lots, Liver Shivers, Writing in the Sky, Etc.”

It is not a big, heavy book, but actually a smallish manual, very readable and portable. It just took me so long to read it because, oh, never mind. Just because.

I kept thinking as I was reading how much sense this all makes, and how much I would have disliked his ideas back in my teen years when I thought decision making couldn’t possibly be spiritual unless there was a good deal of fasting and agonizing involved, trying to find the Best. Also, trying to discern who is The One, the Only One who is my Soul Mate was the subject of long and earnest debate between me and God.

Now I read this book and say, “It could all have been so much more restful and simple.” DeYoung is not advocating an easy, skate-through-life approach. Rather he says, “Often when we ask to know God’s will, we aren’t asking for holiness or righteousness or awareness of sin. We want God to tell us what to do so that everything will turn out pleasant for us… and we don’t have to take risks.” (pg. 40)

He emphasizes that God doesn’t have some hidden will of direction that we have to totally get nailed down before we ever take a step, for fear of walking down the wrong road and ending up where we weren’t supposed to be, therefore forevermore having missed The Best. Mr DeYoung addresses his book specifically to a generation who “have too many choices… Preoccupation with the will of God is a Western, middle class phenomenon of the last 50 years. People on a dollar a day just don’t have that many choices.” (pg.32)

“Jesus doesn’t treat obsession with the future as a personal quirk, but as evidence of little faith.” Matt. 6:30 (pg.56)

Coming soon: How then should I make decisions?