One Day At A Time

I woke up early this morning and was looking back through old Facebook posts. I came across two things from late 2009, early 2010. The first was a Rick Warren quote that my old worship pastor sent me. It said "If God answered your prayers immediately, you'd begin thinking God was a big vending machine: put in a prayer,  pull out whatever you want."  Then I also stumbled upon a song that I had posted by Corey Smith called "One day at a time." I'm listening to that song on repeat (thirteen year old girl style!) as I write this and it takes me back. I thought back to what was happening in my life during that time. Aaron had come back from treatment in late October, 2009. It was hard. Really hard. At that point we had been together (and I use that term very loosely...we had always had a very toxic relationship filled with breakups and makeups...extremely unstable) for about four years.  I guess at that time, I thought treatment had "fixed him" and he would come home and we would be a perfect family of four. I had done some work in my own life and I guess I assumed he had worked on "Aaron the boyfriend" and "Aaron the dad" along with "Aaron the addict." I remember begging for God to work through us and rebuild our family. I remember thinking "Nothing's happening. Nothing is different. Our family is broken." And that was it. Our family of four was not meant to be. It wasn't in the cards. And I spent the next year working through that in my mind. I basically wasted the year of 2010!
Flash forward to today. I look at how different my life is. I can't help but look at that post from 2009 and realize exactly why my worship pastor sent me that quote. I was praying my guts out for God to give me my family. I sooo badly wanted my family to work..to just BE. There were so many times in those years that I felt so lonely. I couldn't understand why God wouldn't want Aaron and I to be together. I couldn't see why God wouldn't just give me what I thought I wanted. Oh how naive I was! I see now why God made me wait. I look at my sleeping babies this morning and I know that their hearts are happy. I know why God made me go at parenting alone for awhile. And I thank God daily  for making me wait for my husband. I look at my marriage, and yes it's flawed, but my husband adores this family. I have a Godly man. I have a man who will love my kids and me like it's his job. I have the marriage and the family that God designed perfectly for me over time. How great is our God!

Marriage 101?

It's Marriage 101...you do not put yourself in situations that are dishonoring to your spouse. You don't put yourself in a situations that would make any other person question your intentions and motives. I can say that in my own experience, as someone who has a lot of guy friends, that this is something in the early stages of my relationship that I thought I might struggle with. Girls are catty and mean (don't act like you don't agree)! It was always easier to be friends with guys. I remember something the first Pastor at Sonrise (who has since passed away) said in one of his messages probably 4 years ago...he said that no matter what, we would never see him with another woman unless his wife was there. He would never have an "innocent" lunch with another woman than his wife. He would pastor to everyone in the church, but if it was a female coming to him about a marriage problem, a relationship issue, etc.. he would refer her to a female pastor on staff.  I remember thinking how cool that was...that his wife never had to worry that an innocent lunch might make her look bad to other people, or that a friendly text message might be misconstrued by the receiver. Her marriage was safeguarded by her husband. Ahhh, that must be refreshing, I thought.

As an almost-5-month married gal, I'm finding the same to be true in my marriage. My husband would never put himself in a situation that would make me question him. I never wonder who he's with or who is texting him throughout the day. And in the same way, I've had to cut out some of my friendships with guys (especially a lot of my ex boyfriends that I've managed to stay friends with over the years) because when you're married, those friendships just take a different priority in life....towards the back. New friendships with men aren't even an option outside of my marriage. Of course this isn't saying that my husband and I don't have friends of the opposite sex, but I guarantee if I got a text from a guy or an email from an old guy friend, my husband would be the first to know about it. I have nothing to hide. I am an open book. My husband has the password to every account I have (facebook, emails, twitter, etc) and he knows that he could look into any account anytime and never find anything I've hid from him. I refuse to build my marriage on distrust, dishonor, and unfaithfulness. I have seen too many marriages fail because of this and I won't stand for it in my own marriage. 

I have a couple people in my life who have confided in me over the past year about troubles in their marriage. And while I ache for their tumultuous relationship, I can't help but feel a little insensitive about it. I have a girl who swears that her marriage has been doomed for years...after being together for a decade before they even got married, now five years into their marriage, she has been unfaithful. When she tells me it was an accident and it wasn't intentional, I can't help but remind her that she intentionally sent hundreds of text messages to a man other than her husband. And while her relationship with this other man may have began innocently, the fact remains that she didn't cut it off after it crossed a point of betrayal. I can say all I want to her about what I think she should do to get her marriage back on track, but what do I know? I've only been married 5 months! (that's what she tells me!)
But my marriage values aren't something my husband and I just created. The values and promises in our marriage are rooted in God's Word. You can read anywhere about how temptation will destroy a marriage. You can read about how the heart does things that sometimes we can't even understand. Jeremiah 17:9 says The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? It's saying that it's the nature of our heart to be drawn towards sinful ways. We fall into a routine and we forget and forsake God. It's a CHOICE we have to make every single day. We have to ask God to help our heart and guide it in the right way...a way that is honoring to Him.
Without faith, it's clear to see how so many marriages fail. Without some moral compass, and not the humanly kind, I can see how it would be easy to get lost. When I see people push me away because of the things I say to them (which are things that are rooted in the Word of the Lord)...and I see them not want to turn to God's wonderful way, I see how it would be easy to lose hope.