A Marriage Epiphany

This is not the typical Christmas season blog post you might expect this time of year. Nor is it the typical subject that one would open with following a long hiatus from the blog, but for some reason I felt quite strongly that I need to share this.

Mr. Beck and I have had a rough season in our marriage lately. That is hard to admit because we have been under the counsel of an older Christian couple, whom we greatly respect and trust, for at least the last couple years. You would think that having consistent counsel like that would ward off times like this, right? Except this world is broken and things just do not seem to work the way we would like them to most of the time.

There have been a lot of challenges in our six year marriage that I suspect we have not dealt with properly over the years and it seems that the negative effects of that have come to a head this late summer and fall. We are now also seeing a professional, Biblical counselor.

This morning I had a one-on-one session with her because Mr. Beck needed to be at work. On the way to pick up my kids from a friend’s house, I had what I will call an epiphany. Or a break-through.

It seems that I have been relying on the fact that God brought us together to be the “glue”, if you will, of our marriage. Instead of daily praying for my husband and our relationship, I have been relying on the belief that God ordained our marriage to keep it strong.

Does that make sense?

Now for the kicker…it does not…can not work like that.

Because SIN.

Are we both believers? Yes.

Do we both believe God ordained this marriage? Yes.

But that does not mean that it will be a cake walk. Now before you accuse me of stating the obvious, let me clarify that I was never under the illusion that marriage would be easy. My rose-colored glasses were not so red that I did not expect there to be problems now and again. Despite being believers, we are still broken human beings that struggle with putting God’s kingdom ahead of our own personal ones. We struggle with worshipping creation (or other things) rather than its Creator. Those are a recipe for disaster.

It is just that this has been the hardest three months of our marriage…in my opinion. My husband might disagree therefore I will not speak for him.

Though I have struggled at different points before in our marriage, I have never felt more hopeless than I have at various points during the last three months.

So this epiphany hit me like a ton of bricks. I had never thought of it like this before. It had never occurred to me this clearly that I was doing this. Now, hopefully you have not interpreted what I have said to mean that it means nothing that God ordained our marriage. I do not believe that is true. It means everything. His Word says that He plans for our good and His glory. My marriage to Mr. Beck is not a mistake. That is so important for me to remember, but it is not what I am supposed to lean on.

What I am saying is that today I realized that instead of daily lifting our marriage up in prayer, I have been relying solely on that belief and myself to make this marriage work and it is failing me. It is failing my dear husband.

Only God can keep our marriage bond strong. Only dying to myself daily and complete dependence on Him will work. People, ourselves included, will let us down every day. But God will not. He can not. It is not in His nature to do so. He gave us free will to choose His leadership and guidance and wisdom or to rely on ourselves. When we are not daily surrendering to Him, we are trying to do it all for ourselves. When we are not praying for our spouses and our marriages, we are not in it for the other person, but for ourselves, and our actions reflect that.

Dear God, I pray I am relaying this correctly and clearly. The last thing I want to do is mislead anyone or cause someone to stumble.

Are you daily surrendering your marriage and lifting up your husband to God?

What impact has it had on your marriage and your life together?

If you have a moment to spare and you are reading this, would you mind lifting us up to God in prayer? Please pray that He would open our hearts and minds for His reproof, wisdom and love and that we would continue to put in the hard work of hashing things out, even when we really do not feel like it. That we would extend the grace He has given to us as individuals to each other, even when withholding it is so tempting.

Thank you, friends.

We do hope that you will have a blessed and merry Christmas celebrating the first, and even the impending second, coming of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!