Brenda Rodgers

Category: Marriage

  • 11 Things I’ve Learned in 11 Years of Marriage

    11 Things I’ve Learned in 11 Years of Marriage

    Yesterday I sat at the hair salon in the same swivel chair I sat in eleven years ago the morning of my wedding. It’s surreal because in eleven years life has taken me far and wide. Now I’m right back where I started.

    11 Things I've Learned in 11 Years of Marriage
    Photo Credit: Mark Parsons Photography
    11 Things I've Learned in 11 Years of Marriage
    Photo Credit: Mark Parsons Photography
    11 Things I've Learned in 11 Years of Marriage
    Photo Credit: Mark Parsons Photography

    It was June 15th, 2008, a Sunday and Father’s Day. I put on my dress in the old building next to The Chapel on North Campus of the University of Georgia. The Georgia humidity laid on us like a winter blanket even at 9:00 in the morning. The sun joined hands with it and beat down so much that we tried to keep the sweat away for pictures outside.

    There were times while planning the wedding that I was over it. Elopement sounded like a much wiser idea. But on that day the fairytale unfolded, and it was perfect. I tell people it has been the only day of my life where I was the center of everyone’s attention. Joy and kindness made me as happy as I could be. I loved it, I admit.

    The ceremony started at 11:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning. I asked the pastor to make the ceremony feel like a church service and let God get the glory. That’s what he did. There was a full sermon with communion.

    Fuscia pink – my favorite – decorated the surrounding. I walked into the reception ballroom and my breath skipped. It was more beautiful than anything I imagined. My florist showed she was an artist.

    11 Things I've Learned in 11 Years of Marriage
    Photo Credit: Mark Parsons Photography

    My favorite part of living in a college town is having college students in and out of our house all the time. When I came home from my hair appointment, the topic of marriage came up with the babysitter. She’s a second-year vet student here in Athens. Then later that evening the same conversation came up with my little ME’s swim teacher. She just graduated from UGA. Both of these young women are in their first wave of friends’ weddings. I told them there would be another wave in their late 20’s. I asked both of them how they feel about their friends getting married since neither of them is dating anyone seriously. For me, it was hard.

    My best advice for my young friends was this – your worst day single will be a good day in a bad marriage. Marriage is hard. Really hard. And it’s not something to go into mindlessly.

    11 Things I've Learned in 11 Years of Marriage
    Photo Credit: Mark Parsons Photography
    11 Things I've Learned in 11 Years of Marriage
    Photo Credit: Mark Parsons Photography

    Of course, walking into our wedding reception I was not thinking about marriage being hard. But after eleven years, I’ve learned a few things while admitting I still have much to learn. So my second quick advice is, even though marriage is hard, it’s worth it because it has eternal significance. God’s doing a good work through marriage.

    Here are 11 things I’ve learned in 11 years of marriage:

    1. Staying married is a miracle and pure grace from God. It surprises me that the divorce rate isn’t higher.
    2. Anyone who says marriage isn’t hard is either not honest or not self-aware. However, we’re made to do hard things.
    3. I’m more broken than I ever thought was possible which has led me to need Jesus more than I ever thought I did.
    4. Don’t compare your husband to someone else’s. God chose your husband for you because He knew who you needed to grow closer to Himself.
    5. Every married couple could benefit from counseling. Yes, every. single. one. Just do it.
    6. My first advice to my little girls and the college girls I mentor is: Marry someone who loves Jesus more than he loves you.
    7. Opposites might attract, but commonality will benefit you.
    8. Marriage is a divine, spiritual mystery full of more depth than I ever realized. I wish I had understood this mystery just a little bit before getting married.
    9. When my husband hurts me I can look deep within him and identify with his hidden wounds. This gives me compassion and empathy and allows me to love him when I don’t feel like it.
    10. Jesus loved us when we didn’t deserve it. Therefore, He commands me to love my husband when he doesn’t deserve it. Love is an actionable choice, not a feeling. And this doesn’t mean being a doormat. Healthy love includes boundaries.
    11. There’s no need to add to the Bible and make “marriage rules” that don’t exist. It’s okay if my marriage looks different from other people’s.

    You probably see that I do not sugar-coat life. Maybe it’s that Enneagram four within me. What I realize, though, is that the romance is in the broken. That’s what makes things beautiful. Look at Jesus. This is the Gospel. Marriage is Gospel work.

    Nothing I write should discourage you, but inspire you to charge ahead and do the hard work. Defeat the enemy who wants to steal us from all that is ours. We are living a fairy tale life. As women, we’re the heroines making beauty out of ashes by allowing a Savior work through us wives. Marriage is a high calling. A high calling with eternal significance. Stay the course, pray hard, and look to Jesus.

  • It’s Eight Years Post Heart Transplant!

    It’s Eight Years Post Heart Transplant!

    I know exactly where I was sitting eight years ago at this very moment. I was in Duke Hospital, and I had just received the news that my husband received a heart donation. Surgery would start later tonight, and it would continue until 5:00 in the morning on August 7th.

    That seems like a lifetime ago. So much so that sometimes people will ask me, “How’s your husband doing?” in an off-the-cuff way, and I hesitate wondering why they’re asking me that. Then I remember, “Oh yeah, the heart transplant.”

    (more…)

  • Five Years Ago There Was a Heart Transplant

    I’ll never forget reading the statistics of life expectancy one year, five years, and ten years out from a heart transplant. My mind couldn’t get to October being here much less five years down the road.

    And here we are.

    It’s been five years since my husband’s heart transplant. You can read the whole story here, but for an up-to-date, intimate family look at life then and now, here’s a little video I made.

    John is healthy and doing very well. We’re expecting our second baby girl in October. To God be the glory. He gets every ounce of the honor. We are so grateful for a gift we don’t deserve, and we’re praising His holy name.

    John’s Heart Transplant :: A Look Back from Triple Braided on Vimeo.

  • Joy in Suffering and a Heart Transplant

    The time of year has come again. I’m writing this post on August 3rd, and as I think back to this day four years ago, my husband was on life support. He was waiting for a donor heart to become available. If he didn’t get a heart within the week, he would die. He got one on August 6th, and had his transplant that night.

    I remember how time stood still for me that week. When your husband is about to have a heart transplant, statistics become very important to you. I would read the survival rates for heart transplant patients after one year of transplant and then after two years, after five years, ten years, and so on. But I thought to myself that I couldn’t even imagine October coming much less a year – or more.

    And now here we are – four years later.

    Joy in Suffering and a Heart Transplant (more…)

  • Pulling Back the Shades {Combatting Fifty Shades of Grey} :: A Book Review

    It’s been two years since I wrote the post How to Talk about Fifty Shades of Grey and then the follow-up post about a reader’s experience – Fifty Shades of Grey – A True Story. Without being able to verbalize the theology or biology behind our sexuality and how it is affected by books like this, I knew Fifty Shades of Grey was destructive. All you have to do is read the words of the woman who wrote me right after my first post published. She knows firsthand.

    Pulling Back the Shades (more…)

  • Social Media, Singleness, and a Hidden Adultery

    She was wearing a black fleece and jogging pants the last time she saw her ex-boyfriend in person. He came over to her townhouse to break the news gently. As he walked out the door she thought she’d never see him again. Then he showed up in her living room five years later – this time on her computer screen.

    Social Media, Singleness, and a Hidden Adultery

    Like some of you, social media is a fairly new dimension of my adult life. I got my first Facebook account when I was 32 years old. For those of you in your 20’s, you may not know an adult life without social media. Regardless, social media has changed relationships with all people – including relationships with past boyfriends.

    Like the story above suggests, before when you broke up with a guy and closed the door that final time, it was the last time. Now you have direct access to him at all times through your computer screen. So what might you do? You might search for him, look at his pictures, analyze his post, daydream about the “what if’s?” and “why not’s?”, and possibly even work yourself into a depression.

    Friends, whether you realize this or not, this is a form of adultery. I know, you may think I’m being dramatic, but I’m not. It is a form of adultery, and it’s even a form of adultery for you, a single woman.

    I share more on this topic of social media and adultery in my article “Is Social Media Leading You Into Adultery?” at iBelieve.com. Join me there to read more.

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