Starting With a Blank Page in Your Marriage
What had started as a simple conversation one evening before dinner resulted in a full scale fight and tears for hours.
In the past these events would shake me and make me feel off kilter for days. My husband and I may have resolved our problem or arrived at some neutral place of reconciliation, but I didn’t know how to stop stewing over the problem, turning a long night of sorrow into stealing my peace and joy over the next day or even week.
This is absolutely not how God wanted me to handle conflict in our marriage. And I’m ashamed to admit I spent more years doing it wrong than right.
However, the more I entrench my life in the Word of God, studying and seeing God’s story of His Son, Jesus, the more His Word comes alive in my life.
The one truth I keep coming back to from God’s Word is that whether your yesterday was wonderful, or awful, for your marriage or your life, today is a blank page. God offers us new mercies every morning. We don’t have to hold on to the sin, struggle or strife of yesterday.
Every single day we receive with our husbands is a fresh page to write a fresh story.
We don’t have to listen to the lie that today will be just like yesterday. In truth, there are addictions, there is bondage, there are problems that are chronic, and yes, some of those might be our reality for today.
But just because the problem doesn’t go away today, doesn’t mean I have to repeat the same attitudes and actions I had yesterday. I can make today fresh simply by having a fresh faith and fresh perspective on the problems of the day.
My husband was well aware of my bad habit of holding onto things for far too long, so with this one recent exchange of wills and words, when we set things right and reconciled and finally went to bed, he was a little surprised as to my response the next day. Prepared for me to still be stewing, when he asked me how I was before he left in the morning, I responded with, “Today is a blank page, and we don’t need to rewrite yesterday’s story.”
Girlfriend, we have a divine opportunity today to release the pain and problems of yesterday and face today with a fresh heart and a fervent faith in the Almighty.
Walk in His fresh mercy today, and leave yesterday in the past. It can’t hold power over us unless we hold ourselves to it. God doesn’t hold it against us and we shouldn’t either.
Wife Step: Write down the things of your yesterday that you want to release to God, and then throw it away! Commit to having a fresh day today with your husband and God. It’s never too late to rewrite the story and wash it in grace.
Natalia Drumm is a writer, speaker and teacher with a passion for building community and engaging women in the Word of God. She is married to her high school sweetheart, and they are raising three little boys in their home town of North Port, FL. Natalia and her husband serve in their local church as marriage small group leaders and life group coaches. They have a passion for healthy marriages as they have seen the restorative power of God in their own marriage and family.
Natalia is an assignment writer for Lifeway Women and serves as the Bible Study Content Editor at Living by Design Ministries. She also volunteers at Proverbs 31 Ministries on their proofreading team and leads a COMPEL Discovery Group. Natalia writes over at www.nataliadrumm.com where she creates devotional study books on issues relevant to womanhood and living in the fullness of God’s design for womanhood.
When not writing, or serving at church, Natalia spends her time running, reading and enjoying a good Netflix binge. She’s also not be one to turn down a cold Coke and hot chocolate chip cookie.
I’m not who I was when I got married.
It was less than three years ago when I stood at an altar in front of a cross and said, “I do,” to vows we wrote and vows we borrowed. And in less than three years, I have become a different person.
My heart has changed. I’ve grown closer to God. And I’ve learned to love myself more. I have very different interests and concerns than the girl who stood in a white dress at 24.
My husband isn’t the same person either. His passions have grown. His friendships have changed. The goals he has for himself and his family are vastly different than they were three years ago.
Maybe you’ve changed a lot since your wedding day, and maybe your husband has too. Maybe there have been some beautiful changes and maybe some that aren’t so lovely. And while sometimes the changes are positive ones, other changes can be difficult.
Some changes threaten to steal away the promises we made on our wedding day.
When we base the commitment to our husbands on how we feel he has changed for the worse or for the best, we are putting our hope in a pretty shaky foundation.
But God. Our God never changes.
“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” Hebrews 13:8 (NIV)
When we put our hope in Him, and we plant our roots down into Him (Colossians 2:7) in our marriages, we stand on the firmest foundation there has ever been.
You’re not who you were when you got married, but God is the same God today as the day you made a vow to Him and your husband.
There are no coincidences and no accidents in God’s Kingdom. He works everything out for our good. Don’t believe me? Read Romans 8:28. He is working your marriage out for good, too.
Don’t let differences distract you from the divine gift God has given you in your spouse.
When marriage gets hard and the fights feel never-ending, we look up. When we wonder who in the world we even married, we look up. When we think maybe we should have married someone different because we ourselves are so different now, we look up.
We’ll never be the same as we were the day we wore a veil and cut a cake, but we can make a decision to hold on to the same feeling of honor and respect we had for our husbands that day. We can take those promises with us no matter how many times we change in this life. We can continue to look up as the world around us and inside us shifts. Because our God never shifts.
When we get married, we aren’t only agreeing to love the man in front of us for who he is that day, but for who he will be every day after that. Because we won’t always be who we are that day, and neither will he.
0 Comments