Who Are You Fleeing To, Married One?

A couple of days ago, I sat down in my office chair as I was reading a text from a dear friend whose marriage is at a crossroads. I put my phone down without responding because I wasn’t sure what to say at the time. I wanted my words to be ones that would uplift and encourage her, not feed into her despair. I grabbed my Jar of Promises (check out my previous blog, 3 Motivational Things…), a container full of verses to look up that contain God’s promises.  My daughter asked if she could pick the scripture this particular day and I let her. She picked the first one right off the top and I’ll be honest and say I wanted her to dig in there a little more but she didn’t. Thank God she picked the scripture she did.

This is for my friend, she knows who she is, and anyone else who may be at a crossroads in their marriage.

Hebrews 6: 17-18 (ESV)  17 So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed with an oath, 18 so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us.

This particular scripture is referring to God’s promise to Abraham and his descendants. However, when I read this scripture I believe that the same God who wanted to show Abraham His unchangeable character is the same God we serve today.

When we are in the midst of troubling times, we have two choices to make (For my own testimony on hard times, check out Perfect and Ideal ). The first option we have, is to believe in ourselves and our ability to fix things. The thing we must ask ourselves with option number one is what is our track record? Is it perfect? Sure, we can make decisions that provide us with an immediate feeling of relief but what about the long run, do those decisions always pay out in the long run? We live in a world where we’re taught if we’re not happy with our spouse, leave and move on to the next person who will make us happy. We treat marriage as though it’s the same as dating and we end our marriages the same way we ended our relationship with our high school boyfriend. We’re outta here at the first sign of trouble.

The second option is to do as verse 18 states and “flee for refuge so that we might have strong encouraging to hold fast to the hope set before us”. While this may seem like an oxymoron, sometimes fleeing means sitting absolutely still, praying and waiting. Flee to God in prayer for your marriage, asking Him to not only heal your marriage and not just change your spouse but to change you as well, none of us are perfect.

When we say our marriage vows, we are entered into a holy covenant, an agreement. I think so often we forget that when we enter into this covenant with our spouse that there is a third-party present, God. Sadly, because we forget that He is just as much a part of our marriage as the man and woman themselves, we easily fall into the trap of believing there is no hope. But friends, God’s character is unchangeable and if we are believers like we say we are, then we have got to hold fast to God’s promises to us. The question is who do you believe in more, God’s ability or your ability? Or maybe it isn’t that you doubt God’s ability but you doubt He will do it for you.

Hebrews 17 states, “So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed with an oath.” Friends, God created marriage to be a beautiful thing and I truly believe that God has a purpose for each and every one of us and for our marriages. But how can our full potential be reached in our marriages if we run in times of trouble? Could God’s desire be to show you just as convincingly as He did with the Israelites the promise of His unchangeable character through your marriage. If everything is always great, where is the opportunity for growth and refinement? Where is the opportunity to see God move and work in only ways He can if we don’t give Him the chance (and His timing) to do it? I love this image I came across on Facebook the other day, particularly the last line and it states, “They become”. Friends, marriage takes work, hard work and we (husbands/wives) can’t do it alone. Just as God guaranteed with an oath in Hebrews verse 17, our wedding vows are too an oath that our Father enters in with us. We need Him to help us, especially in times of trouble.

 

Friends, I am here to encourage you in marriages today. While well-meaning friends and family members will agree with you and concur that your spouse is not fulfilling their duty, that feeling of validation does nothing to save your marriage. Instead, I encourage you  to turn to God, flee to God for refuge and let Him show you how if you depend on Him,  He will fulfill his promise to you because He doesn’t lie and His character is unchangeable.

I reached out to two of my friends and I would like to share their testimonies with you.

Friend #1 shared this:

The first year of my marriage, the word divorce came up probably every other week. I was pregnant with our first child and on our first anniversary we were living separately (We didn’t even get to eat our wedding cake that we had kept frozen from that special day).
Although we had dated for about 7 years before marriage, somehow we were not making it as husband and wife. We had premarital counseling and received approval to be married.

Trouble came because things that we disagreed about during counseling started to appear during the marriage. One of the major disagreements was that my husband felt like he shouldn’t have to come home at a decent hour. He wanted to hang out with his friends as if he was still single. I didn’t have a problem with him hanging with his friends, I just wanted him home at a decent hour. That became a huge problem in our marriage and caused many arguments. So my response to his actions was divorce. My husband would get mad when I would bring up the dreadful “d-word”.  I couldn’t understand my husband.  He didn’t want a divorce but he didn’t want to compromise with me either.

Of course I believed in God and prayer but the flesh in me called my mom and dad first. Both of my parents listened to me and they never suggested divorce. I remember thinking, “Dang, why am I the only one trying to solve this by getting a divorce?” I would pray and ask God to help me because I didn’t know what to do. Months went by and of course, being as pregnant, I shed a lot of tears. This situation added so much stress to my life. I couldn’t fathom the possibility that I was going to give birth to a child and bring her into a broken home. I believe that was my breaking point, I didn’t want to raise my child as a single parent because I grew up in a single parent home.

At this point my prayers began to change, I started to pray for my husband. I was being selfish in my previous prayers because I only asked God to help me! After many prayers for myself, my husband, our marriage and our child, my situation started to turn around. My husband called me one day and said that he wanted to come home. After a of couple dates and long conversations about making the necessary changes to fix our marriage, he came home.

This year we will celebrate our 7th year anniversary! Oh and yes we have small disagreements, but divorce is never apart of the discussion. Most disagreements we can fix on our own, but if not we take it to God in prayer!

Friend #2 shared this:

My husband and I have always had a pretty solid marriage until this recent 3rd year. Things became very stressful. His sense of job security became very shaky when another company came in for a buyout, and it began to affect our entire marriage. Not knowing the entire story (because it takes time for my husband to get things out of his system) I could not understand the stress that he was going through. I felt like my husband did not want me or didn’t even love me. Many things that I’d never thought about before began to creep into my head… is he cheating on me? Why doesn’t he love me? Did I marry the wrong man? Should we get a divorce? The enemy comes to kill, steal and destroy and I was allowing him to put his foot into the door. I then even considered stepping out, myself, on my husband.

I spoke with my best friend… who told me she would pray for me and that I needed to pray harder for my marriage, but more specifically, my husband. It was the turn of the year and I decided to fast and pray to save my marriage… not knowing what to expect. At the very beginning of my fast, the movie “War Room” was on demand and it was if God himself was speaking right to me. The #1 thing that I learned was that my husband is not the enemy. Satan is the enemy. Anytime I felt like blaming, complaining or criticizing my husband, I decided to pray for him instead. I begin to fight the enemy, not my husband. Almost instantly, my marriage improved.

My husband and I have dedicated to having one night out the week for family night with no screens and no interruptions where we solely focus on each other. We recently went on a marriage retreat where we were reminded of why we loved each other so much in the first place and we’re looking forward to a nice vacation in the Caribbean this summer and celebrating our 3rd year anniversary. Things have not changed at his job just yet, but we’ve changed as a married couple. It’s amazing how we went from 3 months in such a dark place to feeling like newlyweds again! God has definitely been our answer. And why that may seem cliché to most couples, we have definitely found prayer and God to be the key to our successful marriage.

Can I tell you something? Neither one of these friends saw the other’s response but do you see the commonality, here?

I pray this helps one person in some small capacity. Praying for you always, friends!

 

 

Additional Resources to Consider:

War Room DVD (There is also a Bible study in addition to the movie.)

Armor of God Bible Study by Priscilla Shirer

40 Lessons from 40 Years of Marriage

Sacred Marriage Series of Books

Boundaries in Marriage

Love Dare

 

Day 6: Friendships and Heartbreak, Part 2

A couple of months back, I put myself out there and wrote a very heartfelt, vulnerable post called Friendships and Heartbreak. The funny thing about that piece is that I almost got cold feet and deleted the sucker. I literally started sweating the moment I clicked on publish and I had to walk away from the computer. In my mind, I knew people would laugh or say that girl is way too sensitive or who cares about what happened in third grade. However, the response was overwhelming! I can’t begin to tell you how many messages I received after posting it and it felt good to know I wasn’t the only one who had experienced these issues.The very same day I released the article, a friend of mine stopped by the house and we began talking about it. Have you ever had a conversation with someone and there is a bigger issue or concept but you focus on a minor detail? Well, that’s what happened to me. I’ll explain.

You see, prior to coming to my house, my friend had to make a stop at another person’s house whom we both know. They too, had a conversation about the article and when telling me about their conversation she mentioned that the person stated, “But Erika never goes anywhere.”  Now, let’s be clear, my friend wasn’t being “messy”, it REALLY was a minor detail in the bigger story she was telling. She probably doesn’t even know that I zeroed in on that little detail but I did. I immediately went on the defense in my mind and started naming all the reasons in my mind why I “don’t go anywhere”. Would you like to know my reasons? Well, I’m not telling you! Why? Because I don’t want you to lose focus on the bigger picture of part 2! It’s a minor detail that I don’t want you to get lost in like I did. So what is the bigger picture? I’ll tell you.

I’ve come to realize that while I needed to write that post, I also needed to grow from it. While the post was my truth, it wasn’t the ENTIRE truth. It wasn’t the entire truth because I took myself out of the equation regarding friendships and I focused a great deal on the other person(s) and their actions. So here are some things that God has laid on my heart.

Number one, I had a really bad habit of holding onto friendships way, way after our season of friendship was over. Now please hear me out on what I’m going to say next because this is all about vulnerability and GROWTH. Too often, we, myself included, see friendships ending as a negative thing. By negative I mean, something negative had to have happened for the friendship to end. Do you know why this is? Probably because we’ve been trained to think that all relationships that end must be the “fault” of one of the parties. But what if neither party is at fault? What if nothing bad happened at all? How many times have we seen the following quotes or similar ones plastered on social media walls.

If our friendship ends, does that mean we were never friends to begin with? If we lose a friend, does that mean that they were fake? Are people who leave our lives unnecessary people? We’ve been conditioned to think, or maybe it’s just me, that there has to be a logical and defined explanation for everything. I think when we don’t know why something happens, our minds start to wonder and we end up creating reasons why things happen. We want to be able to assign the blame onto someone or something. The truth is, not all friendships are meant to last a lifetime and sometimes we’ve got to see that as a good thing. Sometimes those short friendships can have everlasting memories that are quite good. So maybe instead of drowning in the “what-ifs”, we focused on the “what-dids” (made up a new word right there). “What did” you learn from that friendship that has had a positive impact on your life?

Number two, you get back what you put out. This goes with new friendships and old friendships. I always felt like people didn’t invite me places and I focused on that for a long, long time. But when I gave it a little more thought, I realized that while I was waiting on them, they could have very easily been waiting on me. I’m so good at saying, “We should get together,” but I’m horrible at making the follow-up call, that falls on me, not them.

Number three, as we go through life’s personal experiences, we change.  The problem with this is that while we acknowledge the fact that we’ve changed, we feel guilty that those changes sometimes mean that friendships change, too. So we hold on and endure awkward exchanges, pretending that everything is the same, and it’s just not. Life experiences such as marriage, divorce, never married but wants to get married, never married and no desire to marry, kids, no kids, young kids, teenage kids, working mom, stay-at-home-mom, and etcetera do shape our outlook on life. This is not to say that if you don’t share the same life experiences, you can’t be friends, that’s not what I’m saying at all. But what I am saying, is that we sometimes gravitate toward those who share similar outlooks on  life and that’s not a bad thing.

Finally and most importantly, God places people in, out, and around our lives for a reason. When I wrote the first part of Friendships and Heartbreak, I didn’t know where I fit in anymore. I was back “home” after having moved away for a year. When I left home, I was a new mother to a six-week old baby, who just resigned after six years of teaching, and was excited about moving to a new city. When I came back home to Augusta, I came back pregnant with my second child, now a stay-at-home-mom with a one year old, lonely from not knowing anyone in that new city I was so excited about, and a longing to know Christ more than I ever had before. My biggest prayer was to have a deeper, more meaningful relationship with God. God answered my prayer by placing me at a new church, letting me discover Mothers of Preschoolers (MOPS), and attending a weekly Bible study class. However, I didn’t realize at the time that God needed to place new people and even an old friend in my life.  But thank God for growth and persistence. Thank God for putting it on an old friend’s heart, Alexis, to keep reaching out to me when for a long time, I didn’t do the same in return. Thank God for putting Marissa in my life, who kept telling me to call her every week at Bible study and I finally did, a whole two months later. Thank God for Chloe, who is quite literally one of the most positive and kind-hearted people I know.  Thank God for Ashley, a kindred spirit. Thank God for walks with Carley. Thank God for Joni and honest conversations. And thank God for Julia, Erin, and Shelby tried, true, and tested friends. And thank God for Berry, who stands far above the rest.

Friendships and Heartbreak

It was in third grade that I experienced my first heartbreak in terms of friendships. Yes, heartbreak. I choose that word because romantic relationships aren’t the only ones that can lead to heartbreak, sometimes friendships can too.

I remember the pain just like it was yesterday. Lonely, sad, embarrassed, and the feeling of being inadequate could describe that day. What happened? The birthday/slumber party of all parties and I was the only girl not invited. Let me go a little bit deeper. One of my best friends had a birthday/slumber party and I was the only girl out of our group of friends who did not get an invitation. Let me take it one step further, the week before the birthday party, I stayed the night at her house and the week after I stayed the weekend at her house. I bet you’re probably confused right now. Don’t worry, I was too. I’ll give you a moment to read over the paragraph again.

Yes, you read it correctly.

I remember the day the invitations went out and I didn’t receive mine. I thought it was odd but I wasn’t worried about it. I mean, we’re talking about one of my best friends here, right? It really didn’t occur to me until the day of the party that I really wasn’t invited. I remember my friend’s mom coming to have lunch with her at school for her birthday on the day of the party. All the girls were talking about how they were looking forward to the birthday party. Apparently, my friend’s parents had rented a van to transport the party guests around town to various places before settling in for a night of fun.

I couldn’t take it anymore. I remember asking my friend if I was invited but just hadn’t received an invitation. “No, I’m sorry, Erika. My parents said I couldn’t invite you.” My little world was crushed, literally. I remember being at home looking at the TGIF line up (Family Matters, Full House, etc.) and not being able to focus on the shows because I was so hurt. I later found out why I wasn’t invited but that is not the focus of this story.

So, why am I writing about this so many years later?

Well, because sometimes I still feel like the third grade girl not invited to “the party”, especially within the past year. Life is different, or at least it has been for me since becoming a SAHM. Both of my best friends live in either a different state or a different city. I find myself mingling in different circles now and I haven’t quite found my way. I have found myself working to establish and create friendships with other women and coming to the realization that I was the only one putting forth effort. If I didn’t call or text, they didn’t call or text and so on. Sure, if I invited them to meet up or hang out, they’d come but never vise versa. Is it weird to say, that I wanted to be wanted, as a friend? I hope not because that’s how I feel, sometimes.

I was so bothered by this, that I sent one of my best friends, Julia, a text message and asked her to be completely honest me. My exact text message went as follows:

Is there something about my personality that turns people off? Too opinionated? Talk too much? Etc.? I feel as though I’m everyone’s “step” friend. Like, I’m the friend filler until someone else comes along. It is really getting to me this week.

I braced myself for the harsh reality I just knew she was going to reply with.  But instead of the gut wrenching moment of constructive criticism I anticipated, she responded with, “I think you’re in a season where you’re coming across a lot of different people who aren’t meant to last a lifetime. You don’t need quantity, you need quality. ”

Then, I read the following verse: A man who has friends must himself be friendly, But there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother. Proverbs 18:24 (NKJV) I read this verse over and over, even reading commentary to make sure I was interpreting it correctly.

The commentary that stuck out to me was Gill’s Exposition of the Bible (Study Light) . The message I received from it is that true friendship is a two-way street and if one is going out of their way to maintain friendships, well, it’s not really a friendship. Duh, right? The other part of this is that if one is receiving the benefits of friendship from another but is not reciprocating it, well that’s wrong, too. For example, you become friends with someone because they work for Delta and can get you a buddy pass (just making something up real quick but you get my drift).

The most awesome part of this scripture spoke to my soul in two ways. It reminded me that I do have “a friend who sticks closer than a brother”,  Jesus Christ. He has always been there for me and literally gave His life for me. Who can be a better friend out there than He? The other part is that as I look over this season in my life, I see how God has taken my lapse in establishing new friendships and turned it into an abundance of time spent building and strengthening my relationship with my Savior. My relationship with Christ has never been stronger than what it is now.

So, thank you God for the friendships that last a lifetime and even for those that last a little while, I know there is a reason for everything. And thank you Father for the friendships that lead to heartbreak. For it is through the heartbreak one can be reminded of the one who can mend broken hearts, the one who is always a true friend and so much more.