God Shots in Your Marriage
Imagine your favorite author reformatting one of their books, so the entire story is crammed onto two pages.
How many problems would it create for you as a reader? The font would be too tiny to read, and eventually, the words would start to overlap. Every story needs fresh pages to keep going.
In the same way, marriages stop growing when they are not able to turn pages and continue. Couples turn pages and add to their unique marriage story with acts of forgiveness, changing attitudes, aligning priorities, and other acts of mutual growth.
Characters in every story have problems to overcome. That is what makes the story come alive. Whenever we see characters handle problems correctly, we learn how to handle our own problems more effectively.
When God Shows Up in Your Marriage
Christian couples listening to the Lord have a “bonus author” who can help them write a story that would be impossible without His touch. God Shots in our marriage make our story special. We’ve had our ups and downs, and God has helped us build a marriage that lasts.
Alcoholism, workaholism, losing an infant, and Dave’s accident are all pages we’ve turned together. We choose to keep writing our love story with Jesus, and it keeps getting better and better.
What would happen to you if God showed up in your marriage? How do you respond when the Lord does not give the God Shot you want but offers a different path for your marriage to grow? Do you have trouble “turning the page” on difficult parts of your marriage? Have you and your spouse stopped writing your story because it is too hard and painful?
Those are a few questions we have considered over the years as we’ve thought about the God Shots in our marriage story. We’ve been through a lot together and trust that these God Shots we can share with you will help you and your spouse write your love story.
Growing Up Together
Orpha and I were high school sweethearts, and we got married at the ripe old age of twenty-one. I am one week older than Orpha, and we’ve lived more of our lives together than separately. We were best friends in high school as we attended dances, celebrated football games, and graduated together in our class of thirty-two students!
Neither of us comes from a great family situation. My parents divorced when I was eleven, and I grew up with my dad in Oregon. My sister lived with Mom in Washington. Mom did her best. She’s a strong lady who worked multiple jobs to get us off welfare. That was always meant to be a hand-up, not a hand-out.
Dad was absent for much of my childhood, but he later became a good father and a good grandparent to our kids. He loved to have fun with our son David. Mom’s still with us but Dad has since passed away. Mom and Dad always did the best they knew, and I am thankful for them both.
Orpha grew up with a terrible family life and struggled with undiagnosed ADD. She was just trying to survive and ended up moving out when she was sixteen. With no parental supervision, she was a bit of a lost child.
Creating Our Model of Marriage
Although we both had our own experiences growing up in our households, Orpha and I had to create our own model for our marriage and family life. I did not want my kids to have the same childhood and teenage years I experienced. The place it had to start was in our marriage. By God’s grace, Orpha and I found each other.
Marriage is forever, not just until one or both spouses feel like calling it quits. We had to learn to grow our marriage, even though the struggles of infidelity, alcohol addiction, the death of Sarah Anne, and other crises that should have ended our relationship. But they did not, thanks to Orpha, not me!
I grew up in a divorced family, but we’re breaking the cycle. Divorce in our generation ends here, with us, in the everyday “here and now” of our lives. Our vision of family is not something that accidentally happened to us. Our marriage today comes from how we chose to grow through each and every obstacle, flaw, sin, and failure.
‘Til death do us part, in sickness and in health, is a commitment we live every day—not just words we spoke on our wedding day.
Finding Jesus Together
Jesus saved us as a married couple in our thirties when Orpha and I decided to attend church. We weren’t sure which church to try, so we picked the one our nice next-door neighbors attended.
The first service we attended was the play Heaven’s Gates and Hell’s Flames. The play chronicles the experiences of people going to heaven or hell. It was an intense service, not for the faint of heart!
There’s a scene in the play featuring an airplane full of people. As we were watching, suddenly, the lights flickered, and they all went out. When the lights came back on, only a few people were left in the airplane. Some folks were called to heaven, and the others were left on earth to deal with what was coming next.
The play made me realize I needed to do something for my soul right then and there. The play ended, and my wife went down to the altar area in the front with me close behind. I couldn’t wait to give my life to Christ!
I hope that our thoughts here are helpful to you as you consider how to make God a bigger part of your marriage. When you truly submit to God in all your relationships, you might be surprised at the healing and blessings He brings your way!