Any~hoo, I know this is just a season...GOD has always used the hubbz as a good provider of groceries and not to mention he has always paid all the bills over the last 20 years. I have been a stay-at-home home school Mama and it is pretty obvious that that does not yield ANY income! I am glad to have done it though, & we have been greatly blessed as a family with our memories and experiences together.
In honor of our 20th wedding anniversary I would like to share a few of those memories here on my blog... perhaps someone can glean a little confidence in the staying power of marriage through our experiences & my thoughts on them!
This is how I Iknow our love, and this is when I feel its power: sometimes basking in the warmth of it, and sometimes in its darkest hour. The best memories I have could not fill this entire internet, there are so many wonderful moments that a family can share. How about the birth of a baby? Wow...words just cannot describe...amazing love, it brings tears to my eyes...big, fat, hot tears of joy are runnin' down my cheeks right now while I am simultaneously smiling as I recall the birth of each of our three children. The memories my husband and I share during those miraculous moments are the GORILLA-glue that holds us together when the violent, angry winds of seperation & divorce threaten to blow between us like a hurricane... leaving us with a choice of bitterness or love. I choose love. (Of course there is the initial attraction we share, we are like two powerful magnets that race to be together once we realize that we are drifting apart.) I still feel butterflies in my tummy sometimes when he walks into a room, I am honored and blessed to have a man with a heart of gold to love me like he does.
At the opposite end of the spectrum then... there is his hyper-active, wild, cave man attitude that makes me wanna' run far & fast from him. He is a manly man, no doubt...he is a country boy, a survivor in the woods (hence his lack of "need" for toilet paper!!!) I love the ruggedness about him, I really do...but it does come with its challenges. Sometimes MANLY MEN act out of rage and toughness like a peacock when it struts its stuff or a porcupine when that fight or flight mode kicks in...ever tried to hug a porcupine? I have (the hubbz) & it does not work...they are prickly and do not respond to love or wanna' let anyone get close...that is when I am so thankful to have my own interests that don't include him...I have found things to enjoy like using my GOD blessed creativity to start my own business. I don't reccomend having interests (that don't include your spouse) that do include other people (obviously people of the opposite sex are bad company for obvious reasons!) because when my husband and I are getting along like peanut butter and jelly the people I had run to for keeping me company feel left out...in my experience that just doesn't work well... because then the other person becomes jealous of your relationship and will sabotage it one way or another.
The porcupine comment I made in that last parragraph made me remember the line I still say to the hubbz when I sense the hurricane a blowin'... I tell him, "I only respond to love!" and I just walk away....That ususally shuts him up!
We hit the lowest point of our marriage two years ago. After what seemed at the time like an unforgivable act of unkindess and blatant disrespect of our marriage I asked him to leave. Being the manly man that he is he would not, so I left him... for four months were seperated and we each had an appointment with divorce attourneys... I felt certain "we" as a family were finished.
Miraculously his divorce attourney asked him, "Chris, why do you hate your wife, what has she done?"
And that's when my husband replied, "She has done nothing wrong, she has left me. She wants a divorce." With that, his divorce attourney suggested that divorce is VERY expensive (ha! that got my husband's attention!) and while he would take the case, he suggested my husband contact me first and do "whatever it took" to try to work things out. Well, what he did not know (nor did I) at the time was that I did not really want a divorce, and that GOD had a plan of restoration, but we all had to be onboard...all hands on deck...it was time to swab the poop deck!
Since then we have reconciled... My husband left the divorce attourney's office and called me from the parking lot weeping... he had had a change of heart. He actually told me these words, "It was like I was standing on the edge of the cliff of our marriage, and I decided I did not want to jump off!"
You see, it was him that had wandered away from center. I am centered in GOD and that is the ONLY reason our marriage is strong today. I read a quote once that said something like... "A woman should be so close to GOD that in order for a man to touch her heart, he has to go through GOD first"...or something like that...basicly I love GOD first. I believe that GOD showed me during that four months of seperation that I could forgive my husband, but that it would take total trust in GOD's ability to reconcile us (not my husband's). So you see, it really doesn't matter what my husband does or does not do... my heart is so full of GOD that I don't =NEED= my husband to complete me...GOD completes me. I am glad that GOD has chosen my husband to support me and to walk through this life with me. (Or probably the truth is that I chose my husband, and GOD has blessed our union!) Yeah, that sounds more like it!
Have you begun to use PINTEREST yet? I have been using many great ideas and inspirations from Pinterest and some other awesome bloggers, while I've been working hard to organize my studio. I am pretty humbled by the outpouring of blessings GOD has showered me with & I would like to share some pix of my studio...when it is finished..I am honored to have such a great place to create stuff!
For those of you interested in what I have been reading from my BIBLE...today I read about WARFARE!!! Did you know that you have anti-spyware automatically downloaded by GOD into your spirit? I read an interesting blog about it here: http://www.madeforheaven.org/christian-blog/blog-bid-8 I really like this blog. The author helps make things so easy to understand! So, go check it out & I hope you enjoy it as much ~ or more than I have!
Blessings,
Shawnie
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