There's never a doubt when we try to do something that is biblical and pleasing to God we are attacked by the enemy. Mike said it best last night during our weekly life group; no matter how well you armor yourself for a battle, the enemy can find the slightest crack and wedge himeself in. Writers, doctors, grandparents, our parents, siblings, friends....they all say one of the most challenging and difficult times during a marriage is the seventh and eighth years. To be perfectly honest Mike and I have felt as if we've been gliding through our marriage. We hardly argue and very rarely fight. We're laid back and have always found our love to be easy. Always felt we were so fortunate, maybe even the lucky ones.
Did I mention we’ll be married eight years this summer.
Hmm. That right there, admitting it was easy, directly set us up for a challenge. We were so blind to the attack from the enemy. In the last few several weeks Mike and I have been challenged in ways we’ve never been before. Since January we’ve really seen challenges come from our finances, friends, family, work, and our life group. We’ve become easily offended by one another, demanded more from each other and questioned each other’s motives and trust. With all of that there also comes a sense of loneliness, shame and betrayal and it’s extremely easy to slip into a state of constant anger and fear.
Our weeks have been heavy with everything I mentioned, but when it came to our date nights, it was easy to find each other again. We would be cheerful and loving just like our normal selves, but when the weekend was over this vicious circle would start all over again. Fortunately, we were both able to recognize it and knew we had to up our communication game in order to get through it. We realized we needed to re-center our marriage on God and not the business of our everyday and trying to keep up. In an attempt to refresh we spent our seventh date going back and reading The 5 Love Languages devotional. We needed to remember we were dating each other and needed to love each other’s language. Although many of our answers hadn’t changed it opened us up to having a safe conversation about what we’ve been feeling in these last several weeks. We were able to lay it all out there and guide each other to what we really needed and wanted from our marriage.
It’s obvious looking back how easily it is to fall off center in our marriage, but with prayer, correction and forgiveness we can set ourselves back up for success. We don’t want our marriage to live for our weekend date nights, we want it to live within each moment of our everyday. When the focus is set on Him then it’s harder for the enemy to knock you over.
Here are some other marriage devotionals and good reads on our marital roles we really enjoy...
(we’re currently in this one and it’s SO GOOD!!!)
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