I am watching a TV show with tears running down my face. It is a mindless drama, yet it hit me hard today. The storyline: a cabby strapped for cash gets killed, the investigation leads the cops to the knowledge that he had built a radioactive bomb. All the cops are instructed to keep the information to themselves, and yet they are all trying to convince their families to leave town. It is at this point that I found my heart stricken. What if it were my town with a missing bomb? What if I knew, and I couldn't tell my husband? I would find a reason for him to go to his parents house in PA. I would want him to be safe. The tears came as I realized that I would be devastated if anything happened to my husband.
What a gift God gives us. He gives us the ability to love another, to spend everyday with them. He gives us the opportunity to know and be known. To love someone, means great happiness and fulfillment. However, it also means there is the greatest opportunity to experience pain. Today, I experienced pain at the mere thought of losing my husband. Thank God it was just a thought and not a reality.
I realize this is the love of God for his people. He experiences great joy and fulfillment when his people call on him and love him in return. But oh the pain he must feel all the time! He experiences great pain when he looses his people, when they experience pain and death. His pain then is exacerbated when they also reject him, walk away from him, hate him and speak against him.
Wednesday, July 24, 2013
Thursday, July 18, 2013
4 milestones of a dating relationship
So many people stare at me in disbelief when I tell them that my husband and I only dated for five and half weeks before we got engaged. Recently, a teenage girl asked me how I knew so quickly he is "the one." I started telling her my story and out of it came four milestones Dave and I were able to climb in a very short time. It hit me that these four milestones are necessary for any dating relationship to progress to the point of a good and healthy engagement/ marriage. Now, I do not readily recommend jumping over all four in five weeks; I would say this process usually takes at least a year. For us, God was the One to accelerate our timing, which is why it worked.
So the milestones:
1. You have to realize that you meet each other's lists. For my single friends, I encourage you to think through the things you really want in a partner. Prioritize them. Pray about them.
My list consisted of:
a. A passion for Jesus, one where I wouldn't have to awkwardly ask: "so where are you at in your relationship with God?" because it was self-evident in how he talked and behaved
b. Love for children, since I know that my primary ministry will always involve children
c. A good name and reputation
d. A beard
e. An openness to the movement of the Holy Spirit even if that means picking up and moving to Africa on a week's notice
Dave met all of these, and I was able to notice that soon after we met. I was hooked.
A friend of mine was talking to a group of high schooler girls about boys. She said there must be an attraction in body, soul, and spirit. The body part is obvious. The spirit is a spiritual connectivity. You both must speak the same spiritual language. The soul is the personality side of life. Both people must have commonalities in activities, in humor, in fun, in energy, in adventure. If all three connections aren't there, there will be struggle and second guessing. I had all three and knew it early on.
2. Get approval from people who you respect. It was so cool for us. See, we met online, which can be a scary unknown. However, shortly after we made it Facebook official we were dating, we had people coming out of the woodwork, mutual acquaintances that were speaking of both of our character. I would like to name just a few so you get the idea: his pastor I used to work with, my landlord went to college with him, his boss was a good friend of my dad's, some friends of mine from high school went to his church. It was amazing that every single one of these mutual acquaintances spoke of what an amazing man he is and how good we would be for each other. This was continued when he met my family. Approval all around. Same when I met his family. I do recognize that I am blessed to have a wonderfully friendly and accepting family. Some people might not have that privilege. But there should be people you respect who are giving green lights and speaking of your individual worth and the rightness of the couple. In fact, it is Biblical. In Song of Solomon, a love song between a man and woman in love, the friends look on them and say, "We rejoice and delight in you; we will praise your love more than wine."
3. Openness about the past. We all have things hidden in closets and dark corners of our lives that we want to keep hidden. A healthy relationship demands that those things hidden be brought to the surface. In order for a relationship to move from casual dating to serious relationship, closet doors have to be opened. That means you have to talk about past sins, past relationships, past hurts, past decisions, past heart breaks. If those things remain in the dark, they become destructive when there is so much more on the line. Scarily, they become relational crossroads. It is possible that they will become the stone that shatters a fragile relationship. But they also could be huge bridges of grace. They could be moments where Jesus asks you to take on his heart, love this person, despite their past and what that can mean for your future. Dave was courageous to initiate these talks. He bared his soul. I don't know how he trusted me enough to do it after only dating me for a few weeks, but he did. He shared; I shared. We both chose to continue on the road, to forgive, and to choose love.
4. Commitment. This last stage can take a long time for many couples. Both people in the relationship have to come to a place where they decide they are all in. Dave made this really easy for me as after only a week of knowing each other he put his cards on the table. He said he didn't want to play any games. He wanted to see if this would lead to marriage, and if we felt like that was not the direction, we would end it right away. It made it so that when the question came to my mind, "Could I spend the rest of my life with him?" I could easily answer that I did.
In God's wonderful plan for me, he allowed Dave and I to hurdle over these milestones with great ease and little time. I know for many that is not the case. I do strongly believe though that if these four are not crossed in a relationship, there will be struggle, disappoint, and a constant questioning if your are doing the right thing or if this is the right person. Everyone must find the person in a relationship with to meet the list, be approved of by respected people, be open about the past, and at some point choose to commit to the other person.
So the milestones:
1. You have to realize that you meet each other's lists. For my single friends, I encourage you to think through the things you really want in a partner. Prioritize them. Pray about them.
My list consisted of:
a. A passion for Jesus, one where I wouldn't have to awkwardly ask: "so where are you at in your relationship with God?" because it was self-evident in how he talked and behaved
b. Love for children, since I know that my primary ministry will always involve children
c. A good name and reputation
d. A beard
e. An openness to the movement of the Holy Spirit even if that means picking up and moving to Africa on a week's notice
Dave met all of these, and I was able to notice that soon after we met. I was hooked.
A friend of mine was talking to a group of high schooler girls about boys. She said there must be an attraction in body, soul, and spirit. The body part is obvious. The spirit is a spiritual connectivity. You both must speak the same spiritual language. The soul is the personality side of life. Both people must have commonalities in activities, in humor, in fun, in energy, in adventure. If all three connections aren't there, there will be struggle and second guessing. I had all three and knew it early on.
2. Get approval from people who you respect. It was so cool for us. See, we met online, which can be a scary unknown. However, shortly after we made it Facebook official we were dating, we had people coming out of the woodwork, mutual acquaintances that were speaking of both of our character. I would like to name just a few so you get the idea: his pastor I used to work with, my landlord went to college with him, his boss was a good friend of my dad's, some friends of mine from high school went to his church. It was amazing that every single one of these mutual acquaintances spoke of what an amazing man he is and how good we would be for each other. This was continued when he met my family. Approval all around. Same when I met his family. I do recognize that I am blessed to have a wonderfully friendly and accepting family. Some people might not have that privilege. But there should be people you respect who are giving green lights and speaking of your individual worth and the rightness of the couple. In fact, it is Biblical. In Song of Solomon, a love song between a man and woman in love, the friends look on them and say, "We rejoice and delight in you; we will praise your love more than wine."
3. Openness about the past. We all have things hidden in closets and dark corners of our lives that we want to keep hidden. A healthy relationship demands that those things hidden be brought to the surface. In order for a relationship to move from casual dating to serious relationship, closet doors have to be opened. That means you have to talk about past sins, past relationships, past hurts, past decisions, past heart breaks. If those things remain in the dark, they become destructive when there is so much more on the line. Scarily, they become relational crossroads. It is possible that they will become the stone that shatters a fragile relationship. But they also could be huge bridges of grace. They could be moments where Jesus asks you to take on his heart, love this person, despite their past and what that can mean for your future. Dave was courageous to initiate these talks. He bared his soul. I don't know how he trusted me enough to do it after only dating me for a few weeks, but he did. He shared; I shared. We both chose to continue on the road, to forgive, and to choose love.
4. Commitment. This last stage can take a long time for many couples. Both people in the relationship have to come to a place where they decide they are all in. Dave made this really easy for me as after only a week of knowing each other he put his cards on the table. He said he didn't want to play any games. He wanted to see if this would lead to marriage, and if we felt like that was not the direction, we would end it right away. It made it so that when the question came to my mind, "Could I spend the rest of my life with him?" I could easily answer that I did.
In God's wonderful plan for me, he allowed Dave and I to hurdle over these milestones with great ease and little time. I know for many that is not the case. I do strongly believe though that if these four are not crossed in a relationship, there will be struggle, disappoint, and a constant questioning if your are doing the right thing or if this is the right person. Everyone must find the person in a relationship with to meet the list, be approved of by respected people, be open about the past, and at some point choose to commit to the other person.
Wednesday, July 17, 2013
Journals
Every once in a while, an all-consuming urge fills me to clean, organize or purge some part of my home. Yesterday the target of this urge was my bookshelf. It has been the target two or three times in the last year of my married life. So the only thing left to clean, organize, or purge is the shelf of journals: every journal since freshmen year of college. The goal was to put them in chronological order.
God spoke to me as I looked through these journals, which was unexpected as I was merely looking for a date to put in order. There were some years represented by three or four different journals. Even the covers of some of the journals brought back feelings of nostalgia and a fragrance of sweet memories. Inside them were notes of encouragement from others and for others. There were pictures of visions or dreams I had had. There were printed out emails. There were dried flowers from Egypt and a song book from a church I had visited. Most importantly though, there were conversations with God. My heart was on the pages of those journals. His heart for me was on the pages of those journals.
I was struck with a sadness as I realized that the last year and half only took up one journal, and it was more filled with sermon notes than an ongoing conversation with my Creator. The vibrancy I once had has changed and settled into an everyday kind of pace. I want it back. I want to know His heart for me and speak it back to him on the lined pages of a journal once more. So I finished my organizing, cleaning, purging endeavor, not by purging anything, but by adding this last years journal to the end of the row. I went out and bought a new one, for in faith, I believe a new season is also coming.
God spoke to me as I looked through these journals, which was unexpected as I was merely looking for a date to put in order. There were some years represented by three or four different journals. Even the covers of some of the journals brought back feelings of nostalgia and a fragrance of sweet memories. Inside them were notes of encouragement from others and for others. There were pictures of visions or dreams I had had. There were printed out emails. There were dried flowers from Egypt and a song book from a church I had visited. Most importantly though, there were conversations with God. My heart was on the pages of those journals. His heart for me was on the pages of those journals.
I was struck with a sadness as I realized that the last year and half only took up one journal, and it was more filled with sermon notes than an ongoing conversation with my Creator. The vibrancy I once had has changed and settled into an everyday kind of pace. I want it back. I want to know His heart for me and speak it back to him on the lined pages of a journal once more. So I finished my organizing, cleaning, purging endeavor, not by purging anything, but by adding this last years journal to the end of the row. I went out and bought a new one, for in faith, I believe a new season is also coming.
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