Brick By Brick

How good it feels to write again with a light heart.

 In short, things have gotten better.

Much better.

Both of us have come to terms with the fact that we are making a choice,

a choice to fight.

My choice to not believe him when he said he wasn't in love,

his choice to forgive things from the past,

our mutual choice to decide this wouldn't be the end.

Because you see,

it can't end.

In my moments of the whitest-hot anger,

when all I heard ringing in my ears were all the voices saying,

 "you don't deserve this, you should leave,

he says this or he says that,

you need to just give up"

it seemed easy to accept the worldview that says that it's ok to stop wanting your marriage to work,

 that it's ok to no longer pray "God, please keep us together, please restore our love"

and instead pray, "whatever happens happens".

No!

It's not "whatever happens happens."

Don't you see?

It CAN'T be.

 No matter how much you're hurt,

no matter how easily you could imagine yourself with a new life,

no matter what angry words are said,

no matter what everyone around you says,

it's your MARRIAGE.

And everywhere I looked

trying to justify myself if I gave up and stopped hoping for it to work out,

I only found scripture telling me I was wrong.

It's painful when you've blamed the other person the whole time

and then realize that you had faults too.

Me?? Have contributed to this?? No way!

Yes way.

It's painful.

But it's true.

And once I was done licking my wounds,

I realized that I had no justification to quit on my marriage.

God wasn't going to back me up later.

God wasn't going to look at me and say,

"You know, I would have done the same thing. He was being so mean to you! You were such a strong woman to go be on your own and start over like that, and just kick that jerk to the curb!"

I would get no pat on the back from my Father.

In fact,

I don't think I could have ever lived enough good deeds to justify the fact that I, a human,

had help destroy something God had put together.

"Let no man put asunder..."

And I realized, as hurt as I was,

I still love that man.

And I know he still loves me.

And I've seen so many amazing changes over the past few weeks;

I have watched our love shine through the fog,

I have seen a miracle.

We hold hands again,

we help each other around the house,

we find ourselves fighting to make the other coffee in the mornings,

even when we otherwise could have slept in.

He winks at me across the table at dinner,

I watch his stupid movies.

I write love notes in dry erase marker on his side of the sink,

and he makes me dinner on nights I work late unexpectedly.

GOD MAKES ALL THINGS BEAUTIFUL.

My faith sometimes stumbles.

I am not a perfect person.

But I am working toward a perfect relationship with the One who has given me everything.

And it is restoring my soul.

Brick

By

Brick.



"Though one may be overpowered,

two can defend themselves.

A CORD OF THREE STRANDS

IS NOT QUICKLY BROKEN."

Ecclesiastes 4:12

How To "Date" Your Own Husband

So this past week has been pretty rough.

 But it's also been pretty darn great.

 This might be a long post,

 so grab your pumpkin spice latte

 (come on, we all know you've already caved this season)

 and curl up.

 I was not a Christian before I met my husband.

 I attended church,

 even taught Sunday School,

 but was not truly a Christian.

 My husband always has been.

 The night before he left for Officer Training School

 he got re-baptized with me

 just the two of us at our church.

 It was the first for me.

 Since then, I have struggled.

 Struggled to maintain and even grow my faith,

 especially when I thought OTS was going to rip my marriage clean in two

 (and which it very nearly did)

 mostly because of my bad attitude. 

 When he left for the second time,

 it was better.

That time, I didn't blame him.

 Even when I dropped him off at the airport

 and on the way home my very faithful car died in the middle of the street.

 Or the next day when I thought I accidentally forgot the parking break on his mustang

 and was sure it had rolled back into our garage door,

 which was why it wasn't opening.

 And my keys were now locked inside

 because of course the garage door keypad had gone haywire.

 And I called a locksmith

 who took an hour to get into my house.

 And when I then tried to re-enter my garage code,

 and the door opened right up.

 Yep, not even then.

 And then we started trying for a baby,

 and that's been a less than perfect journey.

 But we decided to take some time out of his incredibly busy schedule

 and do a Bible study together

 for the first time.

 Our AMAZING friends/neighbors gave us Fireproof.

 We watched the movie and did week one's lesson.

 I didn't realize my husband was this smart.

 Let me elaborate

 (before you think I'm a total jerk).

 Being a new Christian,

 I suffer from interpreting the Bible EXTREMELY literally.

 And I often way way way get it wrong.

 We were instructed by the study to read a passage,

 the one that talks about how God knows every hair on your head and knew you when you were being formed in your mother's womb;

 how we were fearfully and wonderfully made.

 Well, I turned to BE in a fit of residual baby-anger

 and said,
"Well, see, women were meant to have babies. Otherwise Adam wouldn't have needed Eve.

 So if a woman can't have a baby,

 then obviously God messed up.

 If we are all made in His image,

 none of us should be messed up.

 So that doesn't even make sense."

 To which my wonderful husband replied,

 "No, no. You're missing the point.

 Women were made to be companions -

 the man was not supposed to be lonely,

 so God made him a helper, a friend, a companion.

 You're supposed to be my friend first."

 So I say,

 "Well then why did God give me this intense desire to be a mother,

 if I may never be? If that's not my plan?"

 BE very thoughtfully replies,

 "Well, just because you may never have biological children

 doesn't mean that those feelings are misplaced.

 Maybe your purpose for those feelings is to be a Sunday School teacher,

 and impact children that way,

 or maybe even adopt

 and change a child's life.

 God has a purpose for those feelings,

 even if we don't know them yet."

 Wow.

 Sometimes I think God gave me the husband he did to humble me.

 What an incredible teaching moment that was.

 And the first time that I had really seen my husband become the spiritual leader in our marriage like that.

 What a man I have.

 I never would have looked at those passages that way.

 I would have stayed stuck in my narrow-minded justifications of my anger and bitterness.

 I sat next to a blind man at the hospital today

 waiting on a prescription to be filled.

 We talked about church and God.

 How happy he was - and he was totally blind.

 Said he had hitch-hiked to get to his doctor's appointment,

 and it had taken him three rides.

 And to think I had never thanked God for the simplicity of my health.

 For my circumstances.

 For having a husband and a house and a car and the sight to drive it.

 This has truly been a humbling and teaching week for me.

 BE and I have decided to "date" again - 

 we're going to take Saturdays and do fun things.

 We have some plans for the next few weeks 

 and I'm pretty excited about that.

 A friend of mine who had struggled with conceiving

 told me to look at this situation as,

 "Who do you want to be when you get pregnant?"

 and that changed my perspective on everything.

 I want to be the best person/woman/wife/Christian/friend/daughter/sister that I can be.

 I need to work on myself first.

 And my marriage.

 And God will add in another when he knows I'm ready for it.

 This is my challenge,

 but I think I'm ready.