“…and it (the house) did not fall, for it was founded on the
rock…” (Matthew 7:24-27)
It’s pretty easy to understand that when a house is built on
a questionable foundation, it likely doesn’t have much of a chance for
remaining standing for generations. Sometimes it’s the ground that the house is
built on that’s faulty, as mentioned in Matthew 7; other times, it’s the poured
foundation that’s at fault.
Recently, I watched one of my favorite home renovation shows
and the house that was having work done on it had a foundation that was
literally crumbling. Even though the land it was built on was solid, the
foundation itself was faulty. Before the contractor could go any further, she
had to have the house raised and the foundation re-poured. If she had done all
of the renovations and restored the home to its former beauty, but neglected the
foundation, all of the work she had done would have been for naught and she
never would have been issued a certificate of occupancy, let alone been able to
sell it.
There are SO MANY directions this post could go in and there
will likely be additional posts on this topic, but we decided that the best
place to start would be with the foundation that we chose for our marriage.
Admittedly, we share a marriage with its fair share of frustrations, but we
really do have an amazing, beautifully imperfect marriage in which we’re truly
madly in love with each other and still passionate in our feelings toward each
other. My heart still races when I hear Bri’s voice. He wraps his arms around
me and I just want to be enveloped even more. I call him “love” and he calls me
“beautiful.” The sound of his voice still makes me smile and we’re miserable
(and cranky) the first day apart following a vacation together because there’s just
no one we’d rather be with than one another.
This didn’t just happen. We chose to make it and keep it
this way. Before we got married, we determined that we would live our lives
together following three “rules.”
- Jesus Christ is Lord of our lives and of our marriage. Everything for us has flowed out of this principle. This is the solid Rock upon which we’ve built.
- Divorce is not an option. Period.
- When we’re angry about something, we’ve committed to deal with the issue at hand, rather than slandering one another’s character.
THIS is what’s seen us through the hard times and trust me,
the hard times have come….and come. Let me explain these three little rules
just a little more.
First, both Brian and I entered into relationships with
Christ at pivotal times in our lives. Bri was 14 and I was 12. We each
understood the sacrifice that God had made on our behalf in sending His Son to
take punishment that should have been ours, in exchange for a redemptive love
that restored to us a right relationship with our Heavenly Father. We
surrendered our lives to Jesus’ Lordship and did our best to follow and honor
Him. Honestly? Bri did a better job at that than I did, but that’s a story for
another time.
When I met Bri, I would
readily confess that I was a Christian, but I definitely wasn’t living the life
of one…until God used Bri to turn my heart fully back to Him and caused me to
choose Him above the things I had put in His place. Want to know what I first
fell in love with about Bri? The way he would teach me about Jesus….we would
talk for HOURS. He would drive me home, we’d steam up the windows PRAYING, then
he would walk me to the door, hug me goodnight and tell me he’d talk to me the
next day. That was considerably different than the “normal” drop offs I’d had
after dates! As we fell in love (Bri says he knew the night we met that he’d
just met his wife) and knew in our hearts that God had called us to be married,
we knew that having Christ as the center of our lives individually and as a
couple was a non-negotiable for us to make it as a married couple. Everything
in our life together has been built on this decision.
Second, we determined that no matter what, for us, divorce
simply wasn’t an option. This isn’t to say that we’re in any way condemning those
who have gotten divorced. We know that we live in a sin-filled, fallen world
and there are consequences for our actions that can take any number of forms
and sometimes, it’s the innocent who pay the greatest price. (Check out Uriah’s
fate in II Samuel 11.) There are times or circumstances when we believe people
shouldn’t remain married and our hearts have broken with friends and family who
have been through it themselves.
On my side of the family, there’s been a history of divorce.
On Brian’s side, there hasn’t been. The fact is that people are torn apart
during divorce and we decided for us that we’d push through no matter what we
faced. I’ll be honest. We hit a REALLY rough period in our marriage and there
came a time when I looked at our pastor’s wife and said, “I have a lot of
compassion and understanding for those who opt to divorce because it can seem a
whole lot easier to do that than to go through what we’re going through right
now.” I remember crying out to God and saying, "Lord, I KNOW I love this man, but...could you please help me feel it again?" All I can say is that when you get
to the other side, it’s beautiful. What we have now is so much better than
anything we’d had prior to that – even in the best of times. We’ve been refined
by fire and we’re better for it, individually and together. Every day we fall
more deeply in love with each other. We may not always feel it happening, but we look
back and realize that it did. We not only love each other, we have a deep
respect and admiration for one another.
Last, but not least, when we argue (because we do) we deal
with the issue that’s causing the argument, rather than seek to assassinate the
other’s character. I can truthfully say that we’ve never called one another a name,
let alone a choice word. I’ve never thought of my husband as a jerk or worse
and he’s never thought that of me. Do we do things that drive each other crazy?
Yep. But we deal with the issue that’s making us frustrated, rather than allow
anger or hurt to cause us to speak things that tear the other apart.
So, these three rules are the foundation upon which we’ve
built. It’s saved our marriage and caused it to be what it is today. We’ve made
one another better people. I’m who I am because of the ways in which God has
worked in my life through my husband and vise versa. We know that this foundation
is one that will last for generations and be a legacy that we can confidently
pass on to our children.
So, what’s YOUR foundation look like? Where have you built
it? What condition is it in? Do you need to lift up your house and fix the
foundation before you do any other renovating? If needed, take the time to fix
your foundation – at least double check it – before you go any further…
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