MARRIAGE IS A GIFT FROM GOD

From the beginning, Ken and I knew that our marriage would take extra special attention, not just because we were continuing to learn about each other, but we united knowing that society had already placed a stigma on our marriage. The odds were against a beautiful and blessed marriage. We started as a blended family - two boys and added three precious guys along the way. The five of them would require our upmost attention, nurturing and care while we attend to each other’s cares and needs and nurtured our young marriage.

So, what did we do? We did what we knew we had to do. We turned our life, our marriage, and our children completely over to God. You see, just after I met Ken, I rededicated my life to God. Just after we married, Ken was called into the ministry. We had so many moving and fragile parts in our young marriage that ‘would have’ and ‘should have’ torn us apart. We had many reasons to give up on each other and our marriage. It was only through God’s mercy and grace, that we saw how to make our marriage work through the struggles before us. Giving God full control, gave us permission to wonder, yet be guided by Him. It gave us permission to be wrong at times, but to know that we are forgiven. We knew that we weren’t perfect, our marriage wasn’t perfect, our children weren’t perfect, but we also knew that we were perfected in Christ.

God’s grace and mercy got us through our disagreements, through our financial struggles, through the challenges of a blended family, through the challenges of special needs, and through the challenge of our own failures, and imperfections. God’s love gave us permission to love and trust each other through it all.

So, as we celebrate the longevity of our marriage, we encourage you to do what we did. Turn it over to God; all of “it” – your control, your life, your marriage, your kids, all of it! If you need coaching along the way, give us a call. As we worked on our marriage and family, we’ve been blessed to work with numerous couples on their relationship. I encourage you not to let your marriage, your family, your love to just fade away – that is a trick of the enemy. God wants you, your family, and your marriage to thrive. John 10:10 tells us that the Good Shephard came to give us life abundantly.

I didn’t write this to portray, on social media, that it is easy and that we have it all together; IT IS NOT, and NO WE DON’T – but through God, all things are possible.