Our Times
We grew up in the 70’s and 80’s. This placed us in the era of roe vs. wade. Michael Jackson and Diana Ross were center stage in the music realm. Cell phones came out in the mid 80’s, forever changing the way we communicate. What I remember most as I look over my years prior to marriage are the changes that took place in safety. As a child, I remember not having to lock our doors and riding my bike about two miles to school everyday. In high school and in early adulthood, all doors were locked and parents stayed with children at bus stops until they were picked up. The sense of safety was beginning to leave our country.
We both came from Christian homes and had parents and grandparents that walked out lives of faith. We are thankful for the Godly heritage and legacy that our parents and grandparents deposited in us. Divorce was looked down upon and we knew that marriage was a “until death do us part” covenant. Yet, much dysfunction existed in both our homes as we were growing up. This created a lot of baggage that we were, at the time, unaware of.
Our Story
My husband I met in high school, He transferred in the middle of the year and was in 9th grade and I was in 8th. We attended a small Christian school. We caught each other’s eyes the following year. He played basketball and I cheered. We were very young, too young to date. So we would go to a pizza joint after ballgames and sit in a booth by ourselves. This made us feel so grown-up! We dated off and on throughout high school (that is a story for another day). We married when he was 20 and I was 19 and pregnant.
Marriage is hard enough as it is, but being so young and pregnant, complicated things by 1000! We were kids, immature, selfish and somewhat ignorant. To say we fought is an understatement. Our arguments were toxic and unhealthy. We had no clue what it meant to be discrete. We openly fought, no matter where we were or who was around. People did not want to be with us. Quite frankly, I don’t blame them.
Our Song
“Always and Forever each moment with you, is just like a dream to me, that somehow came true.” This is the first line in “our song” and as ooey-gooey as it may sound, we truly feel this way today. Although, it was far from the truth in our first seven to eight years of marriage. Those first several years were more like a nightmare than a dream come true.
Our first plan of action was to do our best to change the other. Since we do not hold that power, it did not work. In fact it made matters worse. But God! Then God opened our eyes to the need for us to look inward. As we did we realized our love was based upon performance. Tit for tat. 50/50. I’ll do this if you do that. Conditional love. God was requiring us to move from performance conditional love to faith love. This was all new territory for us and was impossible without the infilling and working of the Holy Spirit. As we both began to submit and surrender to the Holy Spirit’s work, we began to see transformation. Through radical redemption and a driving force to find some kind of happiness in our lives, today we are happily married.
Our Prayer
Today, as marriage missionaries we have made it our life goal to help others find what we have. To live in the fullness of what God intends for marriages here on earth. We pray that others will come to understand what it means to apply faith to their marriage. To know God’s purpose for marriage. We have asked God to continue to give us others that we can mentor and disciple and that He will use our testimony and biblical principles to transform their marriages. Our prayer for you is that you will experience the “Always & Forever” love that God has for you and your marriage.
Check out our podcast with Gray and Shelly here!
