The other night I skipped downstairs while my husband was watching the PGA golf tournament. A commercial was on, so I knew I had a small window to ask the question. It was a question that already had a “right” answer, but I just wanted to make sure he knew what the right answer was.
“Do you think your illness made our marriage better or worse?”
He didn’t hesitate in giving me his answer, and as he did my forehead scrunched up, and my face said, “What?”
He told me that he thinks it made our marriage worse because it was just too much all at once – moving, new jobs, and then a heart transplant. He went on to say that he just didn’t have the patience needed for a new marriage. But, he also said that it did teach him a lot about me and my loyalty to him as his wife.
That wasn’t the right answer. Well, at least not the first part. But the commercials were over, and my window of time passed, so I didn’t ask him to explain any further.
Before asking my husband that question, my thoughts were that his illness definitely made our marriage better. Yes, it was stressful, and not something that most couples have to endure for quite a long time if ever, but it made us quickly realize the true purpose for marriage.
As I mentioned yesterday, I went into marriage knowing that it wouldn’t solve all my problems, but secretly hoping that it would. I think that most people, even the wisest, have that little seed of hope deep down that maybe, just maybe, this will be it – the one thing that makes all things good. We all have a tendency to search for God outside of His presence.
When faced with a life-altering experience, however, like a chronic illness that could lead to death, this hope in things other than God is quickly shattered, and you realize that God is all you have. There is no longer hope for your own happiness, your own fulfillment, your own comfort. Your hope becomes your ability to lay down all of yourself for another person, and you have no choice but to do just that.
Only a short time after our wedding God took our vows and peeled them back to their bare bones. There we got a tiny glimpse of The Cross – and the purpose for marriage. Marriage is God’s way of helping us experience His love for His Son and the sacrifice of His death on the cross. It’s purpose is to sanctify us through laying down our lives for each other, over and over again, in continual sacrifice, just like Jesus laid down His life only once for us.
Some people are never saturated in this kind of love, but this is the love of our Father. If we live a life of sacrifice in our marriages, we get to experience what His love for us to truly like.
My husband and I didn’t have a choice, and this was the gift of his illness. So, did it make our marriage better or worse? I would say better. Definitely not easier, but better because now we have the taste of sacrificial love to fall back on.
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