marriage – Page 3

Forty Years of Saying Yes

July 9, 2014 by Ann 1 Comment

This past week, my parents celebrated forty years of marriage. Forty years! What an amazing milestone. What an incredible thing to celebrate. We live in a culture that glorifies weddings but often slams marriages. And yet what I have seen through the marriage of my parents is something that both rises above culture and challenges it.

My mom grew up as a pastor’s kid; when my parents were married my grandpa did the officiating, and my dad wore a white tuxedo with a powder blue ruffled button down shirt that spilled out from the lapels. After the wedding my father serenaded my mother on the church steps with “The Sweetheart of Sigma Chi” (the man can sing), and they held a reception at the church with punch and cake.

Their wedding was simple. God was honored, promises were made, cake was cut. In the grand scheme of wedding history and the Pinterest-crazy weddings that now take place, their wedding would have seemed, I can imagine, very unimpressive.

But it is their marriage that has proven impressive. It is their marriage that has proven those simple vows true a hundred thousand times over. And I have been one of the closest witnesses to that marriage.

I lived in a home where my parents spoke love to one another and to us every day. “I love you” rang throughout our house like a bell, the echo of the words always hanging until the bell was rung again.

I lived in a home where my parents did fun things together, where they enjoyed one another. I watched them host dinner parties and also get dressed up for nights out. I loved that they went on dates together.

I lived in a home where my parents talked to one another—and to us—openly and honestly. We had dinner together as a family most nights of the week and we shared our days with one another regularly.

I lived in a home where my parents kissed each other often and unashamedly. There was very little that made me happier as a child than to see how genuinely my parents were in love.

I lived in home where my parents told us that they would never divorce and that they would always be together. I am eternally grateful that they meant it.

I lived in a home where my parents laughed. And laughed. And laughed. I lived in a home where we all laughed together so hard sometimes that we had to pull away from the dinner table to catch our breath.

Is our family perfect? Hardly. Is their marriage perfect? By no means. But for forty years my parents have lived out their promises and their love with faithfulness and with tenderness and with joy—so much joy. They have walked through deep trials, as every marriage does. They have walked through countless changes, as any marriage stretched over forty years is bound to walk through. But they have clung to Christ and to each other, and their marriage is a beautiful representation of the love of Christ and his church.

I am honored to know them as parents and also as friends. And I celebrate you, Mom and Dad. Your faithfulness in marriage has borne great fruit. Thank you for saying yes at the altar forty years ago. And thank you for continuing to say yes to God and to each other every day of those last forty years. I love you both more than I can say.

Filed Under: About, Marriage, Uncategorized Tagged With: 40th anniversary, anniversary, Christ-centered marriage, Christian marriage, Christian vows, family, Jesus, love, marriage, parents, tribute, wedding

Dating Your Husband: The Hows & Whys

May 21, 2014 by Ann 6 Comments

It seems fitting, during this week of the year, that I have an article up at Darling Magazine entitled “Mom’s The Word: Dating Your Husband.” As a woman who became a wife and a mother during the month of May, seven years apart, writing this article reminded me afresh of the reasons why Michael and I are so committed to continuing to date. You can read it here, but I’m including the basics below:

The Whys

Time is a valuable gift.
Making time to date one another in a season of life that is very busy (and shows no signs of slowing down any time soon) is a priceless gift we can give our spouse. Time is a precious commodity to both of us, and when we willingly spend that time with one another, we are saying you are worth my time. And because our lives are made up of just that—time—we are saying, in essence, you are worth my life.

Dating Your Husband: The Hows & Whys Share on X

We invest in what we value.
If you’re like me and you’re not rolling in money, the components of getting a date with your spouse can seem too costly sometimes—paying for a date and a sitter can really add up. Yet, we invest in what we value; that doesn’t mean we have to spend loads of money to date, but we do have to invest in cultivating our relationship as a couple.

When we short-change our spouse, we short-change the family.
As a mom, I want Ella to have everything she needs (and more). But more than many other things, children want to know that their parents are in love and that they enjoy one another; this brings peace and stability to a home. Having a consistent date night doesn’t guarantee a healthy marriage, but it does offer intentional space to grow together as a couple.

The Hows

Intentional connection.
Date night won’t add much to a relationship if there is no real connection. While watching a TV show together can be fun, it’s also important to create space to talk and continue to get to know one another. We’ve even purchased books to help jumpstart these conversations—and we keep learning about each other in the process.

Keep it simple.
Sometimes, the thought of planning a date night—on top of everything else—can seem like a burden rather than a blessing. So, most of the time, we keep it simple: dinner at one of our regular spots, coffee at our favorite cafe. It’s not the place and the surroundings that matter—it’s the time you get with one another. If you’re stuck in a routine and you need to break out of it, look at the options at your local library or community college–many offer one-night classes where you can learn a new skill, such as a cooking class or an art class.

Sometimes, go fancy.
The caveat to keeping things simple is that there are times when a fancy night out or adventurous date is exactly what you both need. New experiences together are fun and bonding, so put on your heels, compliment his tie, and make a reservation at your favorite restaurant or go see a show together in the city! Or, if you’re more of the adventurous type, go to your local climbing wall and spend an hour with an instructor, learning how to climb. Take a salsa dancing class or a country-line dancing class. The options are endless!

Either way, make it happen.
Regardless of what you do, actually having a date together is the key. If Michael and I only had a date night on the weeks it was convenient, we would never get one. But we are committed to investing in our marriage in this way, and so we make it work, even if it’s a shared dessert at home after Ella goes to sleep or a walk at the park with her in a stroller while we talk.

How about you? Do you and your spouse have regular dates? What do they look like?

Filed Under: Guest Post, Marriage Tagged With: date night, dating, husband, marriage, nonnegotiable date night, practical dating tips, practical tips, wife

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.