17 YEARS OF MARRIAGE...A THOUGHT-PROVOKING PERSPECTIVE

It has been 17 years of marriage for Danny and I tomorrow...a decade and the perfect number...all wrapped into one relationship. When I think of a decade, my first thought is to think of a season of life that I quickly connect with emotionally as a child.  So much occurs in the first 10 years of our lives.  It is beyond comprehension actually.  We live through it and we can't really contain it but we are who we are because of it.  I can honestly say that my marriage has been like that.

Then there is the number 7.  God uses that number repeatedly in the Bible as a number of completion and also sanctification.  Perhaps that is why I am compelled to write about it.  I don't always understand, but I always trust in Him who created the significance within His words. And again, my marriage has been like that as well....

I was reading something about God's references to the number 7 and then I read this: "the symbols God embedded in the design of His Word continue to build one upon the other, endlessly and effortlessly amplifying their mutually coherent implications. Each independent thread in this Divine Tapestry strengthens every other thread until they unite to form an absolutely unbreakable cord." That is very profound and yet makes perfect sense to me...especially within my marriage.

I immediately thought of the verse of scripture that was on my wedding program the day Danny and I were married on March 23, 1996.  It was Ecclesiastes 4:7 and it says: "Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves.  A cord of three strands is not quickly broken." 

I thought of how often this has been true in our marriage.  We have been teased, tackled, kicked, tossed, slapped,  and punished in many ways as we have served, loved, honored, hoped and dreamed.  We have stood tall, walked without understanding,  crawled on our knees and surrendered to pain and here we are 17 years later in our marriage, a lifetime it seems of serving an enormous purpose with incredible battle scars in our family and in the mission God has chosen for us and we can feel as we felt in those first 10 years of our life...like a child without understanding and yet looking to the ONE with all of the answers.  

I am so thankful to know that God loves us and understands our completely faulty and incapable selves.   I feel blessed to know that things in life do not have to make sense to be acceptable...and for those things in our lives that are not, I can trust Him still...and even more.

Very little matters even though life can offer many distractions.  Remembering what it is that you value more than your own agenda is one of those priority principles that you must put in focus.  When you are walking your walk, your journey of faith, your pursuit of purpose, or whatever you may refer to it as;  always think on what matters more than your circumstances? For me: I must be able to answer myself with a confident response that it is WHO I am aligned with in my journey that matters most.   When the assurance of that answer is tucked firmly in my heart as well as in the foremost part of my head, then I can make that journey with an ever-expectant posture and an ever-present hope and know all is well.  I am quite confident that is what matters most.  I believe the WHO you are with is far more important than any WHAT life throws at you.

So as Danny and I celebrate 17 years of infancy, adolescence, adulthood in our marriage as well as press on toward completion of purpose and sanctification of mission, I am grateful that God chose well for not just me, but those that He gave to our charge.  

Love is patient, love is kind, and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.
~1 Corinthians 13:4-7