Christian marriage

Renewing Our Vows

May 5, 2014 by Ann Leave a Comment

May is our anniversary month; this year we will mark our eighth anniversary. We are on the far side of the first decade, now, and I am so, so grateful for our marriage.

A while ago, I wrote an article for Today’s Christian Woman about why we chose to renew our vows. I hope it encourages you–whether you are married or not. Marriage is a meant to be a beautiful picture of Christ and the Church, and Michael and I are seeking to reflect that in our own marriage, flawed as we are…

During our first year of marriage, Michael turned to me. I don’t remember the context or the occasion for his words, but I remember what he said. “Marriage isn’t celebrated nearly enough,” Michael said. “How about, every five years, we either throw a big party or go on a trip?”

I agreed and smiled, tucking away what he said in the back of my mind.

Last spring, as our five-year anniversary was approaching, I reminded Michael of those words.

“How about a vow-renewal party to celebrate five years?” I asked him. My little sister was getting married within the year, and I had been looking at wedding blogs and magazines with her. Vow renewals were becoming more popular, and as a romantic, I was smitten with the idea.

He raised his eyebrows quizzically. “What would that involve?”

“It would basically be a party where we have a short ceremony and say our marriage vows again. I think it would be a great chance to celebrate God’s faithfulness to us over these last five years.”

A week later, after thinking and praying together, we decided to nail down a date. “I love the idea,” Michael told me. “We can recommit to one another in front of our community and celebrate the gift of marriage together!”

A Community-Focused Celebration

Michael and I love our marriage, and although our marriage has not (yet) been long in years, we act as a source of counsel, encouragement, and challenge to many other couples in our church, where Michael is a pastor. We are strong proponents of marriage and love helping others catch the vision of biblically centered and peace-filled unions.

Together, we started brainstorming about the deeper purpose of our vow renewal.

“You know, we didn’t know any of the people in our church when we got married five years ago,” I mentioned to him.

Michael was nodding. “It’s crazy, isn’t it? Because we moved to a different church, our entire community has changed since the wedding. So many times, I’ve thought about how strange it is that none of our current friends were there when we got married.”

“Right! And I know that they know we’re committed to our marriage vows, but there is something really meaningful about speaking vows in front of people who see you week in and week out.”

Michael was tapping his pen on the kitchen table. “That’s a big part of the reason I’m really getting excited about this party. Saying our vows again—with our friends there—gives us and them a higher level of accountability in our marriage.” He stopped tapping his pen and looked at me, then at the list of people we were going to invite. “This will be so fun.”

Read the rest of the article here.

Filed Under: About, Marriage Tagged With: anniversary, believer, Christian marriage, Christian vow renewal, faith, Jesus, marriage, promise, vow, vow renewal, wedding

The Best Day of My Life Was Not My Wedding Day

March 20, 2014 by Ann 10 Comments

I recently had a former student email me some questions she had. She was wrestling through things in that email, big questions about life and living as a woman in our culture, and something she wrote struck me like a bell. She said that our culture points to the belief that a woman’s wedding day–the day those vows are made at the altar–is the best day of your life.

She is single. She is wondering if she will have that day. But you know what she wrote me, what floored and humbled me?

She wrote that she is choosing to believe that the day she vowed her life to Jesus was the best day of her life.

Yes, I say in response. Yes and yes and yes again. And so, here is my response to her:

Yes, the day you gave your life to Jesus was the best day of your life. It always will be.

But first, you must come to terms with the fact that you have not had a wedding day. That day you long for–it was not that. You did not walk down any aisle draped in layers of white, and you did not have a hundred guests watching you pace in time with beautiful music. You did not lock your eyes with a man who had won your heart for months and years, with a man who had paid for a diamond that sparkled like fire on your hand.

You did not stand in front of a priest or a pastor and promise all faithfulness unto death, for richer or poorer, for better and worse.

The best day of your life was not your wedding day. This day is even better. Share on X

You did not have a reception afterwards where you toasted and cut cake and danced and laughed and hugged.

You have not had any of that. I can offer no promises to you that you will have any of that before you die.

But here is what you have had, sister and friend. On that day when you gave your life to Jesus, whether you were four or fourteen or twenty-four: here is what did happen.

You walked down the aisle of your life covered, like me, in the rags of brokenness and shame. Thousands upon thousands of angels looked on and celebrated–God himself, in fact, celebrated your steps toward himself. You looked at the Man waiting for you there–the One who had been wooing you and had finally won your heart over months and years, the man who paid for your life not in diamonds but with his own blood.

You stood in front of him, both High Priest and Shepherd, and accepted him. And then he made promises to you–promises of faithfulness unto death, promises of giving you true riches, promises of never leaving or forsaking you.

And you left that moment clothed in his righteousness that covered–removed–all of those rags you had come to him with. You left as one washed clean and made pure.

The Great Reception is coming–a party that will surpass all others. There, you will share a cup with Him and there will be music and laughter and hugging so rich that all eternity will hardly be enough to contain it.

So yes, that day–that day when you gave your life to Jesus was the best day of your life. It was mine, too.

Filed Under: God, Marriage, Truth-Telling Tagged With: best day of my life, bride, Christian marriage, Christianity, faith, groom, Jesus, love, marriage, salvation, wedding

The Cost of Marriage

December 7, 2013 by Ann 4 Comments

[Link to the full article here at Today’s Christian Woman!, where it was originally published.]

Michael was in the driver’s seat and I was holding a string of ultrasound photos: glossy, black-and-white images that gave us glimpses of our first child. Moments before, we had been in the dark room where the technician had asked us if we wanted to know if I was carrying a boy or a girl. Yes, we wanted to know.

A girl, the technician had told us. We were having a girl.

Now, driving in the car, we said her name over and over to each other. This was Ella, hiding away in my belly. This was Ella, her name no longer an option on a list but a person joining our family. A baby. A girl. Our girl. Ella.

I looked up from the photos as we drove down the four-lane road. We were heading to our favorite restaurant to celebrate, and as I looked up, I saw Michael’s eyes softened with tears. “Someday,” he said, “I will walk her down the aisle and give her away.”

Now, eight months after staring at those ultrasound photos, and three months after her birth, I often look at Ella’s face and try to imagine what she will look like in 5 years, in 10 years, in 20 years. Today her tiny, rounded nose and full cheeks beg for kisses. Her eyes are more blue than the grey they reflected in the hospital, just 14 weeks ago. Her mouth, always moving, always sucking, and–more and more–smiling back at us, is small and pink. She is sill more baby than girl.

I wonder still, as I did during all the months of pregnancy, who this child is, what she will be like, who she will love. She is still a mystery even though she is in my arms, and I pray that we have many years to learn each other as she grows up.

As I pray for her now, I pray similar prayers to the ones I have been praying for years—prayers that I prayed before we knew she was a girl, prayers that I prayed before we knew I was pregnant, prayers that I prayed even before I was married, before I went to college. I have been praying for Ella for years, when she was only a foggy idea of a child that I might one day have. I have prayed for her salvation and her relationship with God; I have prayed for her relationship with us, her parents; and I have prayed for her spouse.

I have prayed—and continue to pray—for her spouse because I know that if she does choose to marry someday, that marriage relationship will shape her deeply and profoundly.

In my own life, the decision to marry Michael was the second most formative decision I have ever made. Choosing to follow Christ was the most important decision. As the Lord, Christ requires all my heart, soul, mind, and strength. Michael, as my husband, is not the one I worship, but if I am loving him rightly—as the second but most important earthly love I have—then marriage requires many of the same things of me—heart, soul, mind, and strength. I know, should Ella marry, that who she marries will shape her more deeply than any other human relationship. So I pray for her husband.

I cannot imagine him any more than I could imagine Ella a year ago. He is no more real to me than the idea of my future husband was when I was 12 years old. I remember praying for my husband then, knowing that one day I hoped to marry, although it seemed a distant possibility. I prayed simple prayers, prayers that my future husband would love God and love me, and that I would meet him when the time was right. It was all I knew to pray. When Michael and I married in our twenties, I had the realization that I had been praying for Michael for a decade, although I had known him for less than two years.

And for the last seven years, our marriage has been wonderful and challenging and funny and hard, as most marriages are. We are both people, woven together by vows and prayers, but neither of us is perfect, or even perfect for each other. There is only one who is truly perfect for both of us, and that Bridegroom will come for us eventually. But here, today, and over these years, we are making a marriage together, full of triumphs and failures. Even my 10 years of praying before marriage, and my seven years of praying in marriage, cannot make either of us perfect. God has answered many of my prayers, to be sure, but this side of heaven neither of us will be fully whole. And so our marriage, lovely as it is, has weaknesses and faults.

And this is why I pray for Ella’s husband, too. If Ella follows in my footsteps, then her husband is not even born yet (Michael is two years younger than I am). But although I cannot imagine him, although he may not even yet be a cluster of cells, I pray for him. Because I know that if Ella does marry some day, that man will mold her soul in ways even deeper than I, the one who carried her inside myself, ever will.

And so I pray. I pray for his salvation and relationship with the Lord. I pray for his parents, most likely my peers, people I could be working with, people I could be passing by on the street. I pray that they will raise him in a God-fearing, loving home. I pray that he and Ella will both stay physically and emotionally pure until marriage, and that they will continue another generation of men and women who love Jesus.

And sometimes, when I look into her tiny face, I know that even with all my prayers, if she marries anyone, she will still marry a man with faults and foibles and failures that will hurt her. My prayers as a mother, even prayers piled year upon year, day after day, cannot protect her from the reality of marrying a human being. Marriage is full of pain and sacrifice, just as it is full of love and contentment. All my praying cannot protect her from that.

Marriage is full of pain and sacrifice, just as it is full of love and contentment. Share on X

The Altar and the Cost of Marriage

And in truth, I do not want her to be able to sidestep the sacrifice that marriage requires. It is a refining tool in God’s hand, a way that he shapes us to look more like Jesus if we respond to him. If Ella chooses to marry, in one sense she will choose a person, and in another sense she will choose a way of life. For when we yoke ourselves to another human, we cannot wander the field of life in our own direction. We must fall in step with someone else, and sometimes it is hard to walk so closely with another soul. Sometimes the load shifts to our shoulders more heavily than it ought to, and sometimes the load shifts to our spouse. The give and take of marriage has never been for the faint of heart. It will cost Ella her life if she chooses it.

I think that is why marriage vows are spoken in front of the altar. The altar was a place of death and sacrifice in the Old Testament. Marriage involves much of the same; self-death, self-sacrifice. But for God’s people, the altar also symbolized hope and right relationship with God. Through death was a chance for life. The altar, and the sacrifices offered upon it, became the pre-cursor to the gospel and the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. He became the perfect sacrifice, offered once and completely, securing the way for God’s people to have right relationship with him—the chance for God’s people to have true, abundant life. Marriage is meant to show the world a picture of this gospel: the Apostle Paul connects the reality of marriage to the relationship between “Christ and the church” (Ephesians 5:32). There is sacrifice involved. There is a deep cost.

The Ultimate Bridegroom

When I pray for Ella and for her future spouse, I do not often dwell on the thought of marriage as her choice of going to the altar to die to herself, while her husband does the same. But in many ways, that is what marriage is meant to be—laying down your life for the life of another. And I know that if Ella does marry—if this is part of her story on this earth—than it matters deeply who she marries. I want him to be a wonderful man, full of God’s love and unwaveringly faithful to her in every way. But I know that he will not be perfect. And that is a good thing. It is good that her husband will not be perfect, will not meet all her needs, and will not make her ultimately happy. If she opens herself to the fullness of loving another person in marriage, she will, at some point, experience the ache of realizing that he is just another broken human being, prone to consider himself above her and her needs. But through that aching, through that realization, the idol of marriage can be broken and another love must triumph. That love is Christ himself, the ultimate bridegroom and caretaker of our souls.

And that is always my first prayer for my daughter—that she will love and follow Christ. A close second is that prayer for her spouse, that she will marry a man whose partnership shows her more fully the glory of Christ, and whose love toward her reflects the love of Christ.

If there does come a day when my husband walks Ella down the aisle to a man who will promise her his love and faithfulness, I will be able to tell him that I have been praying for him longer than he has been alive. I never pray that he will be perfect. But I do pray that their marriage will lead both of them more wholeheartedly to Jesus. This is, I think, the best prayer I can pray.

Read the article here, at Today’s Christian Woman.