Brenda Rodgers

Category: Marriage

  • Become an Organ, Eye, or Tissue Donor!

    Today is National Donor Day along with Valentine’s Day, and I couldn’t let it go by without asking you to please BECOME A DONOR!

    My husband had a heart transplant almost two years ago.  It was a miracle in the making, but he almost didn’t receive an organ match in time.  Please consider registering and discuss your choice with your family.  They need to know your desires as well. 

    And THANK YOU to all of the donors, and THANK YOU to all of the families who have loved ones who are or were organ donors.  We appreciate your gift more than words can express! 

    If you have any questions or concerns, please let me know!  I will be more than happy to talk to you about our experience or point you to the information you need.  There is a lot of misinformation about organ donation, so please do the research yourself. 

  • Joy in Tragedy

    Join me today for 5 Minute Friday with The Gypsy Mama where we write for five minutes on a given topic. No editing. No criticism. No worry. Today’s topic is: Joy

    I can’t explain it.  There’s no way to.  It wasn’t from me.  I’ve not felt it since.  Well, not in the same way. 

    I stood at the fork in the hallway.  My husband was behind me in his hospital bed, and nurses surrounded him holding up his air supply and medicine bags as they rushed his bed up the hall.

    He was dying.

    I turned my head to the right to look at him one last time and down the opposite fork in the hallway he went – going to one last attempt – a surgery that could save him or that could take him Home.

    And in that moment it came.  Again it sounds quite ridiculous.  But I know it was real.  It was overwhelming.

    Joy.

    Do not get me wrong.  There was no happiness in my heart.  It was almost broken in two.  But the thing that kept it together was the gift of joy sent from Above.

    It was a joy that came from hope.  Hope that he may still live.  It was a joy that came from eternity.  Eternity where I will live with him forever.

    I have not met it since – that joy that is supernatural.  But even today I look for it and anticipate when we’ll meet again.

    ** I am following up with this note after I posted my entry to say that I wrote this before reading Lisa-Jo’s post about Sara.  What is miraculous to me is that I know now that the words and ideas I wrote were from God.  My confidence in joy has been confirmed again, and I thank you, Sara, for giving us a glimpse of what His supernatural joy is like.  Many blessings to you, and thank you Lisa-jo, for sharing.

  • Football Season VS My Marriage


    In an earlier post I mentioned that my husband introduced himself to me by saying, “Don’t bother inviting me to a wedding on a Saturday in the fall because I won’t be there!”  

    I know what you’re thinking.  How could he have gotten away with such a rude opening line?  Well, that was his tag line on Match.com.  Yes, we met online, so now I am a walking success story that it did work for me.  (However, I do have a lot to say about online dating – Christian online dating – but that will have to be another story for another day!)  

    So, when John said that nothing would stop him from watching football on Saturdays – even something as important as a wedding – he meant it.  I came to realize that real fast.

    We got married in June.  The next September my best friend since third grade (we were then 32 year old) got married.  And of course I was in the wedding.  So here we go.  She got married in the fall, during football season, on a Saturday, and to top it off during one of the biggest games of the season – the UGA VS Alabama game!  

    Thus brings John’s and my first . . . real . . . big . . . fight! 

    Now, back during our dating days we talked about the whole Saturday, fall rule, and I did agreed that we would reserve Saturdays for football with the one caveat that if my brother (who was unmarried at the time) or my best friend got married on a Saturday in the fall we would have to go.  But really!  Who would have ever thought that one of these two scenarios would actual take place?  We didn’t, so we both put on our “that will never happen to us blinders” and went on our merry, happily dating way.  

    Now the rings were on, there was no turning back, and here we were . . . in the biggest fight!  OVER FOOTBALL?  WHAT?  

    Since that fight I have come to some conclusions about football and my marriage. 

    I cannot honestly say that I understand the whole football obsession thing because I don’t. 

    I cannot honestly say that I don’t sometimes get resentful when it’s October and football has been on the T.V. for six weeks straight because I do.

    I cannot honestly say that I always agree with revolving our schedules around football because I don’t.

    However, I do try to embrace it.  Why?  Because it is important to John, I love him, and I love him more than allowing it to become a wedge between us.

    So here are some thoughts that help me:

    1. I knew it going in.  I know this is not always the case.  I learn more about John everyday, and some things I did not know before we got married.  But this I did know.  I knew it was a part of him (which I talked about here). And I knew it was a part of the “deal”.  For me to then become a nag over football after getting married is manipulative.  And I don’t want to be manipulative.  I agreed to this, and so I must accept it.

    2. I am grateful that I can participate with him.  We go to all of the home UGA football games in the fall, and I am so grateful that John has a hobby that we can do together.  A lot of men like to hunt or play golf, both of which I couldn’t do or would really, really not want to do!  So I focus on the fact that college football is a time I get to spend with him.  We have made so many wonderful memories in Sanford stadium! 

    3. I choose to embrace all of him.  Again, I have a choice.  I can either bicker and whine and nag and pretty much make life miserable for everyone (which we all know, ladies, that we can do at times!), or I can make it fun – for everyone!  I choose to make it fun.  On the Saturdays that we are at home I try to make special snacks, do a little decorating, and use college football Saturdays as a good excuse to do the things I like to do (like cook, bake, and decorate) but don’t always have a reason to do.

    4. I can’t change my husband.  Only God can.  I don’t want John to be better off living on a corner of the roof! (Proverbs 21:9) So when I feel resentful or angry or that things are unfair, I try to take all of that to God in prayer instead of being a “quarrelsome wife”.  I know that God will reveal to John, and me, the decisions we need to make about our family and our priorities.  It is not my job to demand those decisions in an argumentative way based on my understanding alone.  

    So what about the fight we had over football and my friend’s wedding three months after our wedding?

    We compromised.  Yes, we did it.  It was not easy for either one of us and especially not for John, so I am very proud of him!  He did not go to the football game.  Instead he went to the wedding and part of the reception.  Our compromise was that he could be in front of a T.V. at kickoff.  So he left early from the reception, and I stayed for the whole thing.  

    On a side note, UGA lost bad, embarrassingly bad, that night to Alabama.  So the sting of not being there in person ended up being a little less painful!

    How do you survive your husband’s favorite hobbies?  
    Please tell me your thoughts!  

  • College Football . . . Around Here, More than a Past Time

    When I met my husband four years ago, this is how he introduced himself,

    “Don’t bother inviting me to a wedding on a Saturday in the fall because I won’t be there!”

    And this is exactly what he meant.  This statement was actually the source of our first big fight as a married couple when my best friend got married that year, in September, during one of the biggest games of the season, but that’s a story for another day!  With that one exception, in the fall we always block off the weekends to watch our beloved Georgia Bulldogs! 

    John grew up going to the Georgia football games and spent many days in the front yard pretending to play football in Sanford Stadium.  We both went to the University of Georgia (now a long time ago), and we got married in the chapel on campus.  So for us it is more than football, it is more than a team, it is more than a school.  It is a central point from which so much of our lives originated.

    So today begins college football season for the Georgia Bulldogs!

    The Menu:
    buffalo chicken dip
    buffalo wings
    sliders
    chocolate chip cookies

    The Decorations:
    black table cloth
    red Carnation bouquet
    Bulldog plates and platters

    The Game:
    In The Georgia Dome in Atlanta
    8:00 PM
    (for us – in front of the T.V.)

    Does your family have a past time that is more of a representation of who you are than just something to do for fun?

  • Chronic Illness Gave Us New Lenses

    There are experiences in life that when you are going through them all you dream about is escape. Everything on the outside of your small window seems idyllic and tranquil and unfair. You wonder how you got stuck behind the closed doors and why everyone else gets to stay out.

    Then as time passes, and the small window cracks, you feel some of the fresh air coming in from the outside, and with it comes a new perspective. As the window opens even further you begin to forget the agony from the inside, and the time shut-in doesn’t seem so bad. You find yourself, after finally stepping outside and perusing around a while, asking, “If I could choose so, would I do it all over again?”

     My answer is that I don’t want to do it over again, but I still want the new lens that the experience gave me. I want the blessing without the reliance.

     For months the reality of death was very real to us. It became a part of our daily conversations. It became a part of our thoughts. It became a part of our plans. After feeling the rawness of mortality everything around you begins to look different and much less significant.

     This was our blessing. This was the prize of hope and a future that God gave us at the end of the day (Jeremiah 29:11). He gave us another lens to look through. A lens that reminds us:
    • Everything we see is temporary. (2 Corinthians 4:18)
    • We have eternity to look forward to. (John 14:1-4)
    • We are here to bring people to Jesus. (Matthew 28:19-20)

    However, even now John and I don’t always use this new lens. As the days separate us further from our experience, we often forget about the new lens we received, and we go back to using those same old lenses that display our rights, our needs, ourselves, instead of each other.

    The days we do, though, we are able to imagine the possibility of doing it all over again. We have a gift that is hard to receive without meeting Jesus in a place where all there is left is reliance on Him.

    Photo Credit: Creative Commons

  • Chronic Illness and the Shift from Motherhood

    It had been over a month since my husband and I were in our house. Our new home had become a sterile room with a roll away bed, one pull out chair, and a constant beeping sound from carts with bags of medicine hanging from them. Around that time we heard the first utterance of what we imagined day in and day out, but sometimes still couldn’t believe was ever going to happen. The doctors told us we were almost ready. We were getting close to walking out the doors and onto the rest of our lives.

    Those words brought me ecstatic joy, but I also knew that the hard work of rebuilding our marriage would also begin.

    About a year before going into the hospital, John’s and my relationship began shifting from a typical, healthy, newlywed marriage of depending and helping each other to one where I took care of him every day – preparing meals and bringing them to him, helping him get dressed and prepared for the day, making phone calls about prescriptions and insurance, and consulting with teams of doctors on what treatment was next. One weekend I had to travel to Georgia for a wedding, and my dad had to come up to stay with him.  Overnight trips to visit family and friends became no longer possible, and my errands had to be run quickly.

    Our relationship shifted from husband and wife to child and mother. This is not what any young, strong man who desires more than anything to be seen as such wants in his life. He wanted to take care of me. But he couldn’t.

    As we moved back into our house and John got stronger, our roles would have to go back to the way they were supposed to be.  Otherwise our marriage would never be what it was meant to be.  I would have to learn to let go of the child needing a caretaker and let John return once again to the strong man he had always been on the inside.

    The rebuilding was not easy.

    Maybe it was partly because our marriage was so new to begin with, but it was as if when we walked through our front door we were walking in for the first time as a married couple. We had to relearn marriage. We had to relearn our roles. We had to relearn what we were both good at doing. We had to relearn communication.

    And I had to relearn how to submit.  It was time for me to let go and allow John the freedom he needed to heal – not only physically, but emotionally and even spiritually. 

    It took time and even some arguments, discussions, and then more discussions, but through the rebuilding John transformed into a husband again. And I transformed into a wife.