JT and Grace

My brother got married yesterday.  It was a beautiful ceremony.  Gracey, JT’s new wife, has a family full of ministers and her uncle conducted the service.  It was the most personal wedding ceremony I have ever attended.  For the bulk of the homily, the pastor recited their love story and God’s provision throughout the five years or so they have known each other.

 

You see, JT and Grace have not had an easy dating experience.  When they started dating, they each had six months before he took a job in Ethiopia and she started work in Mozambique with the Peace Corp.  They dated until they left the United States but broke up once in Africa.  The next five years brought a series of reconnections and break ups that were difficult on both JT and Grace.  These stories are the ones we now joke about as a family, but Gracey’s uncle did a terrific job of making it clear how all of those events were used by the Lord to make them better for each other.  Throughout this process, I can see how God changed JT from a young, adventurous college student who was intent on reaching his own goals to a man who is now ready to put Grace and her goals and dreams into his plans.  At 22, JT wasn’t ready to see God’s plan in Grace, but now he is able to give God all the glory for bringing such a special, beautiful woman into his life.  He is able to cherish her as God intended all along.  Likewise, as her uncle pointed out, Grace learned a lot about kindness, forgiveness, and patience as she waited on JT and God’s timing for their lives together. 

 

Andy and I did not go through the same challenges as JT and Grace, but our story also included a breakup, lots of prayer, and some difficult obstacles.  Right before our wedding, I remember telling my friend, Marianne, that I was thankful for the difficulties because I think God taught us how to love each other through our dating life.  I don’t believe true love is solely a feeling.  I think true love is primarily demonstrated in actions.  As 1 Corinthians 13 says, “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”  Before I got married, I remember praising God for the difficulties in our relationship because they taught us patience and kindness and forgiveness and how to protect and trust one another.  In essence, we learned how to persevere through difficulties and grow stronger together.  I think Grace and JT have been taught the same lessons in their relationship, and I’m thankful for the firm foundation God has given them prior to starting their lives together.

 

However, a firm foundation does not make a marriage, just as a concrete slab does not make a building.  God is a master creator and has a beautiful structure in mind for all Christian marriages, but that structure requires continued hard work on our parts.  The morning of the wedding, one of the groomsman’s wives, Leah, and I got assigned the task of cutting out small cards that said “Tips for the Bride and Groom.”  The cards got put out at the reception and guests could write advice on them and drop them in a jar that went home with JT and Grace.  It took Leah and me a good 20-25 minutes to cut out all those cards, and I never even took the time to write advice on one of them!  So, I’m going to conclude this blog with a tiny bit of what God has taught me in a brief six months of marriage.

 

I’ve learned that a wedding is only the beginning of a love story.  In my dating life, I saw the wedding as the destination – and for us, it was one destination as it took God working a few miracles to get us to that day.  However, as miraculous as it was that God paved a way for me and Andy, he is nowhere near done with us, just as he is not done with JT and Grace.  Married life has been 100 times better than dating life, but it has also taught me that we have a long way to go toward having the picture of marriage we want to have.  I’m learning that taking two highly independent, goal oriented people and putting them in the same house with the instructions to work together can sometimes be a recipe for disaster.  Once Andy and I got past the first month or two of delirious happiness to be in the same location, we found the next couple of months to be a struggle of figuring out how to fit one another into our lives on a daily basis.  Last week, it occurred to me that, for the first time since our “honeymoon phase,” we had experienced our first month with no real disagreement or conflict – quite a feat since the month of December was full of traveling and balancing families!

 

What made December better than the rest of the fall?  That would be God hammering away at our building and helping us put up a framework that includes the following:

1. Fall Forward.  Genesis 2:24, “For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife and they will become one flesh.”

My favorite book on marriage is Sacred Marriage by Gary Thomas, and in it he gives the advice, “Fall forward.”  He says that no matter what – no matter how angry, tired, or upset you are – you should always fall toward one another and not away.  There have been times when Andy and I have had communication issues that have caused confusion, frustration, or hurt feelings.  It has been hard to “fall forward” because even when we go to each other, we haven’t always been able to explain well to one another what we are thinking or feeling, but God has honored the fact that we try.  I’ve also found that the more we fall forward, the easier it becomes to understand and help one another and the stronger our building becomes.

 

2. Pray Together. Matthew 18:20, “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am in the midst of them.” 

There is a cheesy saying that says a couple who prays together stays together.  I’m not big on this type of cliché, but I think this one could be true.  When Andy and I pray together about our marriage, our conflicts, and our dreams, I find that the “problem” looks so much smaller in comparison to how big God is.  We also have a foundation that allows us to look at all that he has already accomplished in us to remind us of his power and where he will be able to take us in the future.  We also take time at dinner every night to pray specifically for other people.  We each pick a person or situation, and we pray together over the request.  We write down who we prayed for and why in a journal, so we can keep track of the ways God answers prayers, and it allows us to celebrate together for other people when we see those prayers answered. 

 

3. Laugh Together.  Psalm 126:2, “Our mouths were filled with laughter, our tongues with sounds of joy.”

Andy and I are not particularly funny people.  We are each individually known for finding humor in situations that no one else sees as funny or interesting.  To make matters worse, we typically do not find humor in the same situations.  One of Andy’s biggest concerns about our relationship when we were dating was that we didn’t laugh at the same things. However, the fun has come in the fact that someone in our house is usually laughing about something.  We have started to make an effort to humor one another and laugh and joke together.  This means that sometimes I join in on a joke with Andy that I don’t think is fun or funny, and sometimes he laughs at my jokes, too, even though he’d never laugh if someone else told them.  In doing that, we have fun with each other.  We create memories together, and we can look back at those memories and find joy and happiness.  Those memories help us create a special friendship and bond exclusively with one another.

 

4. Serve one another. 1 Peter 4:10, “Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.”

Service can be hard.  Andy and I had both lived alone for a long time prior to marriage, and we were used to doing whatever we wanted with our time and energy.  Learning to serve one another even when we don’t feel like it can be difficult, but the thoughtfulness of service can brighten an entire day.  Service looks different in every relationship, but for us it comes in small gestures.  Every morning, Andy makes our bed and puts all the throw pillows in place, and before he gets out of bed on workdays, I make his coffee. In the evenings, I make dinner and ensure that there is hot, healthy food on the table before he gets home, but he is quick to make a trip to the grocery store with a minutes notice for any items I forgot.

 

I know this is not an exhaustive list, and I know that I have no idea what it takes to achieve a lasting marriage, but praise God, I’m learning!  I’m learning that life is not perfect, and that rarely do we love one another as we should, but I’m also learning that God is greater than everything that concerns us.  Somehow, he is able to work in our frailties and sin and brokenness to give the world a picture of his love through the covenant of marriage, and I’m thankful for the opportunity to be that imperfect picture.  And I’m thankful for Grace, for God’s provision in adding her to our family, and for the opportunity to see she and JT be a blessing to the world.