what they said

They tried to tell us marriage would be hard. Once when we were engaged, a seasoned older marriage couple drilled us on how many kids we would have, how we would manage difficulties, and what we would do about each other’s idiosyncrasies. We scoffed at their doubts about the strength of our love. They actually got in a fight while they were talking to us, which further fueled our confidence. It wasn’t long before we realized it would take more than confidence to arrive at a safe place in our marriage.

Undoubtedly those early days were powered by passion. Who knows what love is when you’ve only known each other a year? We certainly trusted God to know what He was doing when we were questioning how we even got together after only a few weeks married.

It was the sovereignty of God and time that fastened us... time is a powerful solidifying agent. Forgiveness, also, becomes a necessary balm on the wounds of a marriage, one that must be applied over and over and over and over again. 

My son opened this Bible this morning; it’s a castaway that resides in a stack of Bibles on a shelf. He opened to Proverbs 31 on Halloween morning, and I just happened to notice. These page wrecked me. 23 years ago, the love of my life scratched out every pronoun for the virtuous woman and wrote my name over it. He read this passage to me the night he proposed. It has never meant more to me than it does right now, this beautiful gesture of faith and hope. He saw something in me that I couldn’t see in myself. God stirred something in him that would carry us all this time and come back to enlighten my eyes all these years later. These are the things that prove our faith is made from substance and not fables. 

The love of God is greater far than tongue of man can ever tell... lvb