We were visiting some friends from our church the other night. They have 4 boys! We had a fish fry with some of their recent catches. (yum! I love having fisherman in our church - especially generous ones!) We proceded to walk through the woods and ride their horses. While some kids were riding horse, Mike was chasing the other kids around the farm: up big round hay bales, through bushes and around the fences. Their oldest boy came running with a smile on his face until he realized his face was all wet. When he touched it and pulled his hand away it was covered in blood. His head had snagged the barbed wire fence. He was really tough about it until his dad mentioned stitches, then fear struck. His parents did wonder how they would explain to the E.R. doctor that the Pastor was chasing their kids around and their son got hooked by a barbed wire fence. However, it stopped bleeding quickly and it turned out to be ok.
It got me thinking of the time after Jenna was born. She was my toughest delivery and ended up in NICU for a few days. Needless to say, it was a pretty stressful time. Of course, she was born on a Friday. Mike had a wedding on Saturday and church on Sunday. I can understand doing the wedding, but he went to all the other scheduled things of his day like nothing had happened. If anyone else in our church would've had a baby in NICU we would have dropped everything and run right down there. But he couldn't (or wouldn't) do it for me.
It was two months later, after things were falling apart that I suddenly realized I was super angry that he hadn't been there for me. It seemed like our marriage was fine, but there were things brewing under the surface. It was like finding blood all over my hands. All of a sudden our marriage was hemmoraging and we needed to get to the E.R.
We were dealing with some other big issues as well. And for us, things got worse before they got better. The situation around Jenna's birth was just the point at which we realized we were bleeding. We're grateful for God's grace and forgiveness in our lives. And honestly, although we sought professional counseling, the major turning point was both of us turning our lives and hearts completely over to Christ in some areas that we hadn't. He was not coming first and we were both being selfish and just plain sinful in many ways.
The counselor we met with was trying to negotiate the details, but he was missing the point. Once we sought God's forgiveness, forgave and started serving each other, the details really didn't matter. When we were focused on Christ and his amazing forgiveness, it really didn't matter where we lived, how small the house was, who did what chores, who did the most work with the kids or who made the biggest mistakes! Christ's forgiveness is bigger than all of that stuff.
2 Corinthians 4:18
"So we fix our eyes not on what is seen,
but on what is unseen.
For what is seen is temporary,
but what is unseen is eternal."
Ephesians 1:7-8
"In him we have redemption through his blood,
the forgiveness of sins,
in accordance with the riches of God's grace
that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding"
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Michelle---
Thanks for your openess and analogy with this one. I know my own marriage was in the ER once and almost a second time! We are in serious need of bandaging and patching each other up right now, but I hope they are still small enough wounds for us to take care of them ourselves. Those trips to the ER are not fun! I actually hate bandaging time----just like when you need to clean out a wound on your body----it hurts. The afterward tho feels so much better than what you felt like with the "dirty" infected wound. The hurt is gone! God is good! Hope this makes sense.........thanks again.
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