It’s a dark, cold morning that came wrapped in fall.  The wind howls outside my window like a lonely ghost. I hold in my hands words entrusted to me to guard for I know Whom I have believed and Who wrote them. I press them to my face and breathe in deep. I believe, like the rise and fall of my chest, the inflating of my lungs, the rhythm of red that reminds me I’m alive pulsing out a prayer.  I have one thing to say as my fingers tap dance out words to a Holy script,

we are not alone…we are never alone.

He said trouble would find us. He said we would have to fight like soldiers, ambassadors, run like athletes. He said a promise formed on lips builds a fortress around a heart, when we know there’s an enemy.

There’s always an enemy.

 He said we would fight against ourselves and our wanting and craving would leave us hungry sick. He said our tongues would kill us. He said we no longer belong to ourselves but to the one He tied us to. He said we would have to carry our cross,

and like Simon of Cyrene, carry our spouses, too.

He said we would feel a slow tearing and unraveling like a favorite shirt, well worn and loved, now unsaveable, the hole too big. If the two who were one were left to themselves, the hole would divide, threads blown away in yesterday’s wind.

And so we watch.  We have watched five pairs of geese, you know the ones who mate for life, at least they say they do, fly hungry and alone, in less than two years. We are filled with a sorrow strong as death; a swallowing grave.  We are filled with a fear that our nest may grow cold without the other to warm us. We are filled with a trembling that dares to look up with expectation to a Holy God that presses into us and keeps His joining of two, knowing that apart from Him we will end up as one, scarred from the jagged tear of divorce.

We’ve begged for papers transcripted by man to lead us out of this holy union. We’ve blown words like poisonous darts at one another, aiming to kill. We have withheld touch, affection, encouragement and worst of all prayer from one another.  We have sought freedom from the other who wore our blame in layers and layers until they stunk to us. We believed our lies

that we would be better apart than together.

That our children would we better and recover from angry ripped pieces of their lives searching for a holy stitching. Craving the tender kiss of God to awaken stony hearts.  Hearts once soft trusting, moldable.

Children shaped and formed by a love that marked them with a personality, a mole, a laugh, a mop of curls or thin strands, smooth and straight.

Children taught not to throw stones, now bending, gathering,  building a wall round their hearts. Laying one stone atop the other, with every fight. Every  argument. Every selfish desire. Every wandering eye.  Every, in between the minutes, fantasy that there is something more satisfying than this.

Another stone.

This marriage has seen trouble. This marriage has been wracked by the forces of greed luring us into a deep that drowned out hope

that forgot how to laugh.

This marriage has left scars on hearts

and holes in walls,

shards of glass on floors.

This marriage has seen financial collapse.

This marriage has knowing sickness, benign blood cancers lurking

threatening to steal tomorrow,

alcohol robbing.

This marriage has been shoved into frayed and damaged brains of a child and forced to navigate through a kind of death of a child we once knew, and embrace someone new and frightening emerging.  Someone we didn’t know,

Who scared us.

This new person would continue to surface ten years strong after the tree stopped 70 mph in a hunk of twisted metal.

This marriage has seen, felt, heard, touched and tasted GOD.

For I know whom I have believed…

and the heavy hand of the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob….the One who leads out captives, the One who took a boy out of a pasture and crowned him king of a nation, the One who promises to accomplish what He has appointed for me,

This God, 

drives my soul unto its knees to pray and to weep and to beg for those being torn, right ripped and left jagged.

I want to fling open my doors and say come! Come and drink and learn and refresh yourselves in His rivers of delight. Come and know the sweetness in suffering and let Him apply healing oil to your wounds.

Carry your cross and carry your spouse!

Carry them when they cannot stand.  speak for them when they lose their words. Pray for them when their hope gets crushed with the steel weight of life.

Don’t stop reaching across the bed

when all you feel is their back.

Touch their face and look into their eyes and tell them you’re staying and you won’t push away from this table set for two. Tell them you will keep rebuilding the nest when unforeseen storms of sickness, depression, anxiety, financial collapse, pressure and work ravage it and leave it in a mess of twisted sticks.

Lay down next to them and stretch your wing over them and warm them

until death separates.

Keep serving…keep loving…

NEVER STOP PRAYING.

Find -the-better-in-the-worse.

held, consumed, known by God,

trish

Don’t forget to join the conversation. Gather hands and mend hearts through an unseen grace and love.  Open your doors. Share a story of healing and grace!

Scripture references: 1 Timothy 6:20, 2 Timothy 1:12, Hebrews 13:5, John 16:33, 2 Timothy 2:3-4, 2 Timothy 2:5, 2 Corinthians 5:20, James 4, Proverbs 18:21, 1 Corinthians 7, Matthew 27:32, Ecclesiastes 4:12, Isaiah 64:6, Ephesians 4:8, Job 23:14, Psalm 36:8, Ezekiel 16:8-9.