Seven years ago I said I Do to an amazing man.
It’s almost unbelievable that we are at this milestone that so many labeled as the end all. It amazes me the things people tell you when you get married such as, “if you make it through the first year you will be fine” or “by the seventh year you will want a divorce and that’s called the seven year itch.” At a time when people should be praying with you and praying for you they instead inadvertently place their “struggles” on your marriage as if it is the norm. Understand that marriage isn’t easy. I mean let’s be honest God brings two people together (assuming your marriage is God led as it should be), usually from two totally different backgrounds, rearing, desires in life etc. and calls them to be one flesh: “So a man will leave his father and mother and be united with his wife, and the two will become one body. So they are not two, but one” (Mark 10:8).
Then He goes a little deeper and commands wives to submit to their husbands; Husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for it (Ephesians 5:22-25).
I had a problem with committing, religion, sharing my space and an extremely SKEWED perspective of submission. A self-proclaimed feminist with a liberal belief system, I couldn’t “dig” this entire submission thing the way the “world” had presented it to me. So here I am, 22, my senior year of college, engaged to this amazing man who understands God in a way I had never understood him and one of his questions to me was would I be willing to submit. Most women would’ve ran at this point but instead I decided to see what the bible said about this word with these negative connotations because quite honestly, outside of turning my nose up at marriage, I knew that if I were to get married I wanted a marriage where our foundation was built on God: how He sees us, how He views marriage and His promises. 5 months before we got married (after dating for 9 months) I bought my first bible that I could actually understand and began going through it myself.
A major piece of our story is that I discovered God through a total stranger. A stranger who reached out to me on Facebook and from there God began to use this man to propel me into my spiritual greatness. A stranger who would call me every Sunday morning and ask if I planned on going to church and being the party girl I was, I kindly told him no and requested that he "sends one up for ya girl.” His response was, “okay but I’m going to call you every Sunday to see if you are going to church.” And my response was a side eye before side eye had a name. But after a while I began to notice a change in my desires (I like to call them our playgrounds). Those places I had to go, I no longer felt the need to go as much as I was going. I began to go to bed on Saturday night with plans to go to church on Sunday. I made my first tithe during our engagement: my last five dollars. Within weeks I received my first refund check, since I had been in college, which was in the thousands. God began to show me who He was (outside of religion) and pull me into having a relationship with Him. Also, God began to develop these vivid dreams I always had into a gift for His kingdom and as time progressed I became more confident in my ability to be a wife.
I met a man 8 years ago, during a time where I was content with being content. I wasn't looking for a relationship, didn't want a relationship and I definitely wasn't thinking about marriage. But he was everything I would have never thought to ask for on the plain piece of paper where I wrote my shallow requirements for a husband. But I’m thankful I made sure to include he had to be someone with a heart after God’s own heart. The details of his heart, his spirit, his obedience and his love for people are so expansive I’m left speechless every time I think about how a girl who would curse like a sailor, socially drink, party all night, all while having no regard for those lovers who came her way, became a wife. How God needed THAT girl to know His plans for her are much greater than this box she placed herself in and that EVEN someone like HER deserved to be with someone who would uphold marriage in a manner that she had never witnessed: Now faith is believing in God’s promises even when you don’t have a blueprint for that promise.
That girl needed to experience completeness in order to wake up in the 7th year and fully inhale what God had created.
I thank God for growth.
I thank God for patience.
I thank God for shining His light through our union.
I thank God for his unending love.
I thank God for a marriage that isn’t perfect but it’s worth it.
I thank the enemy for never sleeping…
To the man my subconscious never dreamed about but ended up being the man of my dreams, I love you! I wouldn’t and COULD NOT imagine doing life with anyone else. Every THING the enemy has tried to use to make us believe his lies we have leaped over those trials like Olympic hurdlers. We choose I Do every day and because of that choice it is hard to believe it has been seven years of us doing this thing called marriage.
I love you so much!
Happy year SEVEN.
 |
| Excerpt from On the Heels of My Father: Devotional |
