My husband and I met when we were both keenly aware of how very unloved and unlovable we were. When we met we had no intention of dating. He wasn’t in that mindset at all as he was a newly single dad to 4 young kids and I was a relatively newly single mom to my one son and recovering from my 2nd divorce by age 25.
I was so ashamed for ever thinking that I deserved love in the first place, the last thing I wanted was a romantic relationship. The thought of it was just humiliating. Both of us knew that we had a lot of wounds that needed healing to recover from our traumas, our poor choices, and our past relationships.
I think it’s an understatement to say that amid our mess, neither of us expected God to give us the gift of each other. But He did.
Our relationship did not start romantically; we started as friends who were hurting together and at times even praying for the restoration of our previous marriages together. Ok truth be told, I would be lying if I said that my soul did not immediately love him but…
Wisdom said wait.
Wisdom said slow.
Wisdom said, only in God’s time and only in God’s will.
As we imperfectly walked out that wisdom, our relationship grew deep, God knew we needed that solid foundation for the healing work that was ahead.
To set the stage for what God was about to do in our lives, the Holy Spirit inside of us, set the desire in our hearts for wholeness, healing, and ultimately for freedom. Seeing we were aligned in this desire, I had the confidence to keep moving forward.
As we dated and started to consider merging our families, both of us saw that neither of us lost sight of our deep need for healing and maturity in all of the stunted places inside of us that caused us to walk such a broken path.
After years of dating, Nate asked me to marry him.
All the fireworks, right?!
Well… for me, it was a sobering moment.
I knew we both had a lot of maturing left to do and one of our kids was deeply struggling. I was battling such shame about being married 3 times. I wanted to hide under a rock, not have a wedding and throw a party, but deep in my soul, I knew I had heard God correctly telling me in marrying Nate.
He (God), was going to change me in ways nothing else could.
And so we slowly, very slowly proceeded.
And postponed.
And then proceeded some more until finally, our wedding came.
Finally, we were a family. We had a beautiful honeymoon in Hawaii. We slept late and swam with sea turtles and chased chickens up a mountain on the most beautiful hike I have ever been on.
But on the last day of our honeymoon reality started to sit in. I realized I was now a mother of 5 and married again. Sounds silly, but something hit us just like *boom*.
It was like a monsoon of chances to change or run away hit both Nate and me.
I was struck with the awful debilitating anxiety about if I was capable of the task before us. Merging families and becoming a stepmom, as well as continuing to take care of my son and not letting him get lost in the shuffle.
On top of that, I was hit with a massive bout of PTSD. Not long after I started to recover from that, we got a call with some tragic news about one of our children whom we both deeply love.
The waves of difficult situations that swept over us within the first 6 months of marriage were countless.
Everything was affected by the hardships and trials we faced.
Everything from our sleep, to our finances, to our mental health, to our children.
Our hearts were breaking but not just into a million pieces. Rather, into countless tiny shards of glass.
I cried out to God so many times through all of it and He reminded me, “this marriage was going to change you in ways nothing else could”.
As I pressed into this word I had received before our marriage, He reminded me that throughout the Bible God shows us the way He grows his people and even heals His people is through… hardship.
He graciously reminded me that He was my God and that He would never leave me or Nate and He would never forsake us.
He spoke healing words over my soul, “I am going to heal you here”. His plan was so different than mine. I wanted to be changed and healed through pleasantness, through a joyful and easy marriage, and peacefully blending our families but God knew better.
As Nate and I suffered alongside each other all of our ability at pretense, all of our trying to be good enough to earn each other’s love was demolished. We were simply and yet very desperately just holding onto Jesus as He held us together. We had to trust Jesus inside of each other to keep us faithful to Him and our vows.
As we both reflect on the first years of our marriage we see how God’s grace was sufficient. It was all we had to lean on and it was all we needed to hold us together. We can see how evident His grace has been from the beginning of our story and we have every confidence that will be until the end.
With so much hardship in 5 short years together as husband and wife, and in the many years of pain and trauma for us both that preceded our marriage to each other we both needed our wounds cleaned out and tended to by our master surgeon, God…
God’s treatment of our wounds was painful, yes. But nowhere nearly as painful as being left in the condition we were in. It was far kinder of God to show us through all the hardship how to do life and relationship with Him and each other differently. Ultimately, he showed us how to rely on Him and not ourselves.
It was far kinder to uproot deeply seeded lies we believed about God, who He is, and who He made us to be.
Going through so much right out of the gate revealed to Nate and me just exactly who the other was and all of our weaknesses…. and because of that, we had a chance to stay in a way that says “I still choose you and I still choose Jesus”.
We had a chance to see and stay through the ugliest sides of the other, our biggest vulnerabilities. No hiding.
All of our shame and all of our family’s brokenness was out there for others to see. With no real ability to hide what we would have been tempted to try to hide if we could have.
And because of this, the work of “iron sharpening iron” could commence between me and my dear husband.
We took up our respective pieces of iron and through our relationship, through our experiences of the other especially in conflict and holding God as the center of it all, He started deeply reshaping us in ways that nothing else ever could have.
Today we do not have the perfect marriage but our highest aim is to have a mature and healthy one. We know that we are really on our way with so much love for each other it sometimes hurts.
But more importantly, we have so much trust in God’s plan for our lives and the lives of others.
Together we have so much trust that His way, even when it’s excruciatingly painful, is so much better than anything anyone could ever dream up.
And we believe with our whole hearts that His grace IS evident in our story even when we can’t see it yet.
Bless you brothers and sisters as you undergo trials of many kinds.
XO
Sara and Nate
“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”
James 1:2-4 NIV