Well, this past weekend will not be one for the scrapbooks. And it certainly won’t go down on our list of romantic alone time. As a matter of fact, after this blog post, I might try to forget it even ever happened…
Marriage isn’t all it’s cracked up to be in the Disney movies. I even hesitate to call marriage a “relationship” because it’s so much more beyond how people use that term these days. Someone the other day was tell me that their 12 yr old daughter was in her first “relationship” and that they weren’t worried about it because all two of them did was text each other back and forth. That’s just pure nonsense and marriage is not nonsense.
A relationship is about two being interacting. Our dog and our cat have a relationship. Marriage is about two people slowly dying to self, and being consumed into oneness. And sometimes the dying and consuming is painful.
But you can’t get to Heaven without dying on Earth.
And sometimes that dying to self involves a lot of thrashing around, floundering and bleeding. And pain.
I was looking over the handful of pictures I got from this weekend, this cold, gloomy, slushy weekend, trying to glean some nugget of value to wash away the bitterness of disappointment. Something to bring a smile, rather than choke my throat with tears of anger and frustration.
Know what I found? The only pictures that turned out?
A 200 year old brick house, still standing among the road construction cones and detour signs…
And a note from God…
Yes, it made me smile.
“And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.” (Ephesians 4:30-32)