The Biggest Surprise About Marriage

October 22, 2014October 22, 20141 Comment

I knew this information on an intellectual level but for some reason I chose to be in denial.

I was shocked the first time it happened; like I never saw it coming and then I cried and pretended like my marriage was over in response to the big surprise.

I cried. All balled up in the fetal position on my marital bed.

If you want to be married one day, if you are thinking about getting married one day, if you are engaged to the person of your dreams and are getting married on a certain-specific-pinterestified day or if maybe you are already doing this marriage thing: there is something that surprised me when I married my husband.

What I Discovered

I was surprised in those first few weeks of marriage when I discovered…

My husband is a sinner. (I say is and not was because he is in fact… still a sinner. I just checked. Really, he is a sinner.)

This truth seems simple enough. This truth is a basic foundation to the Christian life, we are all sinners. (Romans 3:23 For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.)

For those of you unfamiliar with the terminology of the Bible, (which was me just ten years ago so no judgement.. really, I just checked and still no judgement) to sin means to simply miss the mark; to go through life missing the mark in the middle of the bullseye of God’s perfect holiness.

It seemed like a simple truth. My husband is a sinner. My husband will not do life perfectly. My husband will miss the bullseye.

I am a sinner. (Again am and not was because I just checked and I currently am the worst of sinners.) I will not do life perfectly. I will miss the bullseye of God’s perfect holiness.

My husband being a sinner meant he would sin against me in those first few weeks of our new marriage.

Me being a sinner meant I would sin against him too.

Living together meant our sin would rub up against one another in that little apartment kitchen as we were putting away our new perfect dishes every morning, noon and night of those newlyweded days.

We would both miss the mark of that bullseye of God’s perfect holiness in that little kitchen as husband and wife and we would love each other imperfectly.

Why this basic Biblical truth about sinners was a surprise to me in my marriage still confuses me.

For some reason I believed “the gospel” would bless me, the worst of sinners, with a conflict free marriage. I really believed that Jesus would grant my husband and I, in a marriage of sinners, free from sin and conflict.

What I Was Missing

I would have spent a lot less time balled up in the fetal position on our marital bed if I had known I was missing what “the gospel” really had blessed two of the worst of sinners with in our covenantal marriage.

I was missing the piece that we are both forgiven sinners in our marriage together.

I was missing the piece that even though I fumed with anger about that water glass that sat there on the counter for days… there was abundant forgiveness for that forgotten glass and abundant forgiveness for my fuming anger.

I was missing the part of the gospel that says, “It is finished.” in John 19:30 It is finished for my husband and it is finished for me.

If you are unfamiliar with the words and the redemption story from scripture, I will tell you that from the beginning, in Genesis, the redemption story of God and His people is about God saying, “It is finished” for the worst of sinners. God is rescuing us from the truths we know at an intellectual level but fail to apply to our hearts. The truths we fail to apply to our husbands. The truths we fail to apply to ourselves.

Because of the gospel, none of us are ever granted a marriage free from sin or free from hurting. However, In Christ, we are all granted marriages full of abundant forgiveness for sinners.

“It is finished” for my husband the sinner. And that is where I have found freedom from the fetal position and the tears on my martial bed.

May “it is finished” be a theme for your marriage. May the gospel give you a marriage full of forgiveness instead of the surprises of sin in your first apartment putting away those perfect new dishes in that tiny apartment.

In Christ I am a sinner. My husband is a sinner.

It is finished for him and it is just the same finished for me.

Unraveled Marriage

September 10, 2014September 10, 20142 Comments

that, in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in with deceitful desires and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.

Just two weeks ago I brought two different running shoes for my long morning run. It was a complete mistake and I had no idea I had grabbed my old left running shoe and my new right running shoe. When I arrived at the trail I laced up anyway and tried to run. 8 miles was the goal that day.

It didn’t feel right running with those two different shoes that morning. My left foot began to ache sooner than my right and as I tried to push through the aches just began to creep up my leg… my shin, my knee… I knew it wouldn’t be long before my hip would begin to twinge so around the two and a half mile mark I decided to turn around.

I walked back and for two and a half miles I thought about how ridiculous it is to try to run in two different shoes. Not only does it look funny it also feels strange and after awhile you begin to feel physical discomfort when you wear the old and the new at the same time.

On my long walk back I thought about Hebrews 12:1

let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.

If you don’t get rid off all of the old… you can’t run. You can’t persevere.

I thought about 2 Corinthians 5:17

If anyone is in Christ he is a new creation. The old is gone and the new has come.

The old has to go away for you to walk in the new way God is calling you to.

It seems as silly as my mismatched shoes for me to think about hanging onto my old self as I walk in the new. But I still struggle with my old patterns and my old ways. I still have so much unraveling to do. There are so many layers to me and I feel like daily, as I read God’s Word, God is saying, “Hey you, put that off, that is the old way you used to think about that, use my Words and walk in them.”

When the old gets tangled up in the new it feels funny. I feel confused, sometimes isolated and off balance. Just like in my two different running shoes, if I try to walk with Christ with some old and some new after awhile it will begin to affect me emotionally, spiritually and physically.

Recently I have been thinking about an unraveled marriage. What would it look like for me to recognize and put off my old patterns and transform them with the Words and Power of the gospel? Could we run with more perseverance towards Christ? Could we feel more comfortable and in step? Would we feel less achy and less off balance?

I think yes. But I think we have some unraveling to do as husbands and wives.

When you come into marriage you bring so many unknown patterns with you. Learned patterns from your own family, learned patterns from your friends, learned patterns from your favorite books and movies.

When I am hurting, it is my natural tendency to stonewall or shut down, cold shoulder, give a cold but bitter “nothing” if my husband asks me what is wrong.

I live with the old pattern tangled up in what I know is true from the Word of God.

If someone sins against you, talk about it. (Matthew 18)

“Come now, let us reason together,” says the LORD. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool. (Isaiah 1:18)

There is a burr in my side to be like the popular Disney Ice Princess and “Let It Go”. Let the old fall away from the new. And feel free, one with the wind and sky.

As a wife, I love my husband and I want to treat him the way God treats him. I don’t want to have old patterns I have brought from learned ways of the world and have them tangled up in the way God has designed marriage in the words of scripture. It looks as silly as those shoes and it feels uncomfortable and unsatisfying. You can’t run. You can’t persevere.

Unraveling is not as easy as switching out your shoes or singing a ballad on the top on an ice mountain. Unraveling hurts. It hurts our pride to say we are doing it wrong, it hurts and takes work to pray and hear and apply God’s designs for living.

Unraveling doesn’t happen once in a lifetime.

Unraveling doesn’t happen once a week after a convicting sermon on Sunday morning.

Unraveling doesn’t even happen once a day.

Unraveling happens on the long hard miles of everyday life with your husbands, wives, kids, neighbors and coworkers. I hope you remember to untangle the old from the new. I hope you remember both of your new shoes.

Why I Have Been Politely Declining Your Dinner Invitation

September 9, 20145 Comments

For the last five years I have been politely declining dinner invitations to your home.

I know you have fabulous hospitality gifts and I want to eat your delicious dinners and scrape my fork on your gorgeous wedding dishes. I can picture your centerpiece, smell the candles and hear the hipster music playing in the background.

Then a loud, old-school record scratch wakes me up from the daydream of what I might think it would be like to come have dinner in your home.

I remember one large very important detail.

I have small kids. Four small kids.

I love them to pieces. I love the dirt under their nails at the dinner table, their loud burps followed by their giggles and their ‘scuse mes, I love their spilled chocolate milks and the food that seems to end up mostly on the floor instead of in their sweet little baby mouths.

I love them to pieces.

However, I have politely been declining your dinner invitation for five years because of them.

Most nights collectively, my children spend ten minutes sitting at the table before asking to be excused and swirling off like tasmanian devils (cute and very loved tasmanian devils). We send them outside or in the basement just so my husband and I can hurry and shovel dinner in our own faces before some else needs us.

Just two weeks ago I ventured out to your home with my kids for a church picnic. In the hour and a half we were there one of my children kept peeing in their pants. He went through three changes of pants. Three. I was in the bathroom changing pee pee pants three times in the ninety minutes I was in your home. One time while exiting the bathroom I found another one of my children playing your piano with his chocolate covered hands. Just as my panic attack was beginning to my make neck tense up and my head shake someone spilled water on your arcade basketball game and maybe tried to ride your dog.

That’s right. It was time to go. I shuffled my children out the door, thank youed and apologized several times while bringing my three pairs of pee pee pants home in my purse.

Just two nights later another you invited us over for dinner. I accepted thinking we may be able to have a decent time. Your family also has four kids so I thought we may be able to make it through the evening without the pee pee pants or my tense neck and shaking head.

We almost made it until my two year old began stripping all his clothes off down to his nude birthday suit on your back deck. My infant was crying and exhausted so I tried nursing her upstairs in your master bedroom but my baby kept screaming. She wanted her swaddle and she wanted her bed.

And lastly. We didn’t have pee pee pants but one of my boys was too scared to ask to go to the bathroom with the big crowd so he just pooped in his underwear instead. This evening’s consellation was poopy pants in my purse. My child pooped his pants at your house.

We had a great time but the drama. Oh the drama my kids certainly like to save it for their mama.

Last night, I invited you to my house for dinner instead. I thought in my own house I could control the poop and the pee and the chocolate covered fingers and faces. I thought while my kids played with their own toys I could look you in the eye and chat about your marriage, your job and ask you what God is teaching you. I thought maybe we could joke and laugh around my table of mismatched silverware and a bottle of red wine.

I love my kids to pieces but they brought slugs and caterpillars in from outside to show you at the table. I love them to pieces but two of them pooped in their pants together outside while playing in on the swing set. And then my oldest child barfed. Right in the middle of the kitchen, coating the hardwoods with the soup I just served everyone and reeking up the house so badly you couldn’t even smell that Yankee Candle I lit for you anymore.

I apologized again and thank youed you for coming as my kids blew kisses and chased your car down the road. They said, “See you soon” as they chased you.

Phew I thought. I don’t think I can do this again for a long time let alone soon the tension in my neck started to come as I thought about it.

I love my kids to pieces. But this is why I have politely been declining your dinner invitation for so long. It’s not how I feel about you, it’s how I feel about pee pee pants in your house. Maybe in a few years once we are beyond the pee pee pants and the strip shows can we look you and your husband in the eye and chat over dinner.

For now it will just have to be the hubs and I, shoveling the food in our mouths and living these crazy years with littles laughing together. We love them to pieces but we’ll keep them and their pee pee pants to ourselves at dinner time.

I Hope You Don’t Find Perfect Love…

July 30, 2014January 20, 2015Leave a comment

Rachel Craddock

As a young woman I saw perfect loves in the movies and heard of perfect love stories in ballads on my radio in my hatchback manual Saab.

The idea of a perfect love brainwashed me into thinking all my relationships would be saturated with whisk-me-away-romantic moments. I really at my core believed if I ever had a dispute with one of the men in my life it would only be moments before they would show up on my doorstep (in the rain of course) with an I’m-sorry-bouquet of flowers.

And that NEVER happened.

Darn love stories.

Darn love songs.

In a way I was disappointed.

My expectations gave me a twisted view of myself and others.

I was naive. My expectations for this so called perfect love ruined any relationship I ever had.

How could any of my boyfriends ever have competed with the image I had in my head-comparing them to a soaked and sexy Ryan…

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I Hope You Don’t Find Perfect Love…

February 26, 2014March 1, 20145 Comments

As a young woman I saw perfect loves in the movies and heard of perfect love stories in ballads on my radio in my hatchback manual Saab.

And that NEVER happened.

Darn love stories.

Darn love songs.

In a way I was disappointed.

My expectations gave me a twisted view of myself and others.

I was naive. My expectations for this so called perfect love ruined any relationship I ever had.

How could any of my boyfriends ever have competed with the image I had in my head-comparing them to a soaked and sexy Ryan Gosling on my front doorstep with a drippy bouquet of flowers and begging of my forgiveness?

What I was seeing on the screen and hearing on the radio built up my expectations for perfect love and left me waiting in my home for ‘no one’ soaking wet with a bouquet of hydrangeas at my front door.

I was left questioning all the moves of my significant others. If my boyfriends couldn’t execute love like in the movies and the characters I compared them to I became suspicious of men…suspicious of perfect love… I became suspicious of myself.

I began to believe lies that I just wasn’t good enough for a perfect love and believed that maybe I didn’t deserve love at all.

The combination of all of the above became very dangerous for me and like a ticking time bomb my expectations literally blew up every relationship I had.

I would like to point the finger at culture and the misrepresentation of perfect love on the radio and displayed on the screens we hold in our hands.

However, I think the real person to blame is me and how I visualized love as being perfect right from the beginning.

Perfect:

: having no mistakes or flaws

: completely correct or accurate

: having all the qualities you want in that kind of person, situation, etc.

Anyone really in a loving and committed relationship knows that love is not perfect at all.

How can love be perfect when the two people in love are not perfect themselves?

As a Christian, I believe that on this side of heaven I will never be perfect. I believe that my self absorption, my bitterness with others, my desire to be righteous like God is all so bad that it requires the penalty of Jesus’ dying on the cross in order for me to be right with God.

I believe in a gospel, the good news, that on this earth I will never be perfect but I am loved by my God – even with

my imperfections.

I am in process.

I am perfectly imperfect.

Actually I am perfecting.

perfecting: in process of becoming perfect or coming to completion

What I know now is in real life love is not perfect. Love on earth between two people is full of mistakes and blemishes. Love on earth is two flawed people choosing to live and love all the imperfections of one another.

There is a misconception of love in our culture. The idea of perfect love is not only on our screens and radios but it breeds in our expectant minds it is spewing out of our lips.

“Oh, he is perfect” or “You are the perfect couple”.

Sure the idea of perfect love is in the movies but we are perpetuating it with our words.

Loving relationships are not perfect. They are perfecting. Love is the perfect moments mixed in with the refining – imperfect ones. I can tell you with certainty I love my husband more now than I did when I met him. Sure he was charming back then and always on his best behavior but in perfecting love I get to be alongside him as he grows and changes into the better verison of who God is making him to be.

Perfecting love can be tough.

Perfecting love is a love that grows.

Perfecting love goes through seasons of giddiness, gladness, anger, sadness.

Perfecting love experiences disappointment.

Perfecting love dwells in the colder seasons knowing that a new season will come.

Perfecting love makes us better men and women as we walk alongside one another and experience a front row seat in the perfecting process of one another.

Truth connection:

I want you to go back to that image of Ryan Gosling soaking wet at your front door with a bouquet of flowers. (Hard to go there I know)

I want you to know it is right to desire this kind of perfect love where from the beginning you are sought after and constantly pursued with a never giving up always and forever kind of love.

I want you to know this kind of love exists but we look for it in a man on earth when this never giving up always and forever kind of pursuing love is actually found in God.

Perfect love is only found when we find it nailed to a cross. Crazy I know but true. The idea of a man loving you so much that he would die for you originated with God. We are hard wired to long for perfect love. You just won’t find it in a boyfriend, fiancé or spouse.

I hope you never find perfect love in any earthly man. I wish you will find perfecting love. The kind of love committed to the process of you being made perfect over a lifetime of some of the coldest and warmest seasons.

And I hope you do not find perfect love anywhere else but on a cross – where a God that loves you so much He died for you. He pursued you. He is still pursing you. He is where you find the man soaking wet on your doorstep pursing you with a never giving up always and forever kind of love.

I hope you don’t find perfect love in anything else but Him.

Romans 5:8

But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us.