Brenda Rodgers

Category: Marriage

  • Media Monday! I’m Guilty! It Does Affect My Marriage!

    For the past few weeks, Courtney at Women Living Well has devoted Mondays to discussing how technology – cell phones, social media, video games, T.V., etc. – affects our relationships.  The first week she discussed how it affects our relationship with God.  Next she discussed how it affects our marriages.  And today she is discussing the role it plays in our children’s lives and development.  (This will be a two part discussion.)

    I have to admit that the first week – how media affects our relationship with God – I didn’t feel like I had enough to write a whole post.  Recently I have been thinking about this further and have noticed that since my alarm clock is my phone I am in the habit of checking “everything” – and I mean everything – email, Twitter, and Facebook – before I even get out of the bed!!  Ahhh!!  This is definitely a reflection of not putting God first in my day, something that I am trying to work on!

    The next week – how media affects our relationship with our husbands – I again didn’t feel like I had anything to write about.  That is until Media Monday passed, and later in the week my husband said these words,

    “You’re here all day on your computer, and when I come home you don’t even spend time with me because you’re still on your computer!” 

    Ouch!!!

    So today we are supposed to write about how media affects our children, but I don’t have children yet, and this issue with my husband was ‘brought to my attention” after last week’s Media Monday about marriage, so today I am writing (and admitting), that yes, media does affect my marriage.

    So what have I done differently since that day a week ago?

    Right now I am at home during the day.  I just wrapped up my teaching year in June, so I typically have summers off from work, but this summer is different in that God told me to get off the ferris wheel, so I am also in between jobs.  I do have a lot of time to do what I love – write – and I do spend a lot of time on the computer during the day.  Even though I can justify that what I am doing is productive and helpful and useful, it is not more important that what I will take into eternity with me – my husband and the other relationships in my life.

    So last week, after the gentle reminder from my husband, I tried really, really hard to not pick up my phone or the computer from the time he came home from work until the next morning.  I can’t say that I was perfect, but it was a definite step.

    Now it’s time to leave this for now, and go practice what I preach! 

    How does media affect your relationships with God, your husband, or your children?  Please tell me here, and be sure to visit Women Living Well for Courtney’s wise, wise thoughts!!

  • My Husband Rocks!

    Last year John said to me,”I will fight for you!”

    These words alone make my husband a rock star!  A rock star of perseverance. 

    He spoke these words to me last summer days before going into the hospital to wait for and receive his heart transplant.  Through forty-three days of a staph infection, life support, heart transplant, not waking up, and finally coming home to finish recuperating, he definitely fought for me.

    This year John is saying to me, “I will lay down my life for you!”

    These words continue to make my husband a rock star!  This time a rock star of selflessness! 

    My whole life God has given me a vision of being a wife, homemaker, and mother.  However, for reasons only fully known by God, John and I did not meet until later in my life than I had hoped and dreamed.  Since college I have primarily been a teacher, leaving the career at one point to be a consultant, and even though I enjoy the “act of teaching”, for many reasons have always felt a deep struggle, tension, and uneasiness in the career as a whole.  Despite trying to ignore it, this tension has only deepened throughout the years.

    Since we have been married, John has experienced this struggle within me.  He has watched me come home from work every day as if I was coming home from a place that is contrary to everything I am, everything I believe in, and everything I see to be true, feeling depleted and worthless. 

    Even though we do not have children yet, John is supporting me and encouraging me to pursue what I believe God has created me to be.  He has agreed for me to move away from my full-time career as a public school teacher to begin a tutoring business and ultimately have a more flexible schedule to serve him, care for our home, and be involved in ministry.

    In many ways this is a sacrifice.  It is scary.  It is an act of faith.  “For we live by faith, not by sight.” (2 Corinthians 5:7)  However, John is displaying the courage of a true man of God.

    My husband is selflessly laying down his life for the vision of the eternal – each other, our family, our friends, our community who we have the opportunity to influence.

    The events that surrounded John’s life last summer were not his choice.  He chose not to give up. He chose to fight. He chose to look beyond the present. He chose faith instead of fear. But he did not choose the circumstances.  They were out of his control.

    This year John is choosing to lay down his life – not literally – but the life he possesses, he controls –  so that together he and I can lay down our marriage and our family for the complete will of our Heavenly Father. This is a choice out of pure love, putting my happiness and well-being before his own.

    My husband rocks because he trusts God with our future.  Even though there are a lot of unknowns about the coming year, he is completely surrendering to God’s call for him as a husband.  “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” 2 Corinthians 4:18

    My husband is focusing on our future while trusting God with our present.

  • Halt

    Halt.

    Life once again has brought us here.  The halt will not be for nearly as long this time, but that does not stop my memory from replaying the feelings from the past nine months when our halt seemed like an eternity and I could not imagine it truly ending.   This time I do not feel like I am looking into oblivion, and for that I am very grateful – and I am still very grateful for John’s heart that makes that possible.

    I am sitting in Duke Clinic as John gets a PICC put in so that he can go home on an IV medication.  For over a month now, he has been sick.  We have not known what was wrong.  First we thought a cold and didn’t think much about it.  Then we thought it was strep throat and went to our primary care doctor.  It wasn’t strep throat.  Next we thought it was Mono and went back to our primary care doctor.  It wasn’t Mono. Just this week his bloodwork from his monthly biopsy showed that the virus John’s new heart was exposed to has decided to show it’s ugly face, and it is active.

    It feels good to know what the problem is and even better that there is not any immediate concern.  John’s doctors told us that at about the six month mark this virus likes to remind its host that it’s still around.  Like we needed a reminder.  We have a lot of reminders from the past valley in our lives.  John will be on an IV medication for a few weeks, and then will hopefully be better than ever as he has been the last several months.

    Our nights and weekends are once again spent nurturing John’s body instead of doing things we enjoy.  The daily struggles we experienced last spring have resurfaced.  The feelings of defeat and exhasution have returned.

    Honestly John is not anywhere close to as sick as he was last spring when his sick heart was still trying to sustain him, but for me I think just the taste of those days has left me more irritated, frustrated, and concerned than I even was back then.  Back then I didn’t know what to expect.  I didn’t know what was going to happen next or how bad it could be.  I didn’t know how good it could be either.  I just lived the experience, like on adrenaline, not knowing what was behind me or ahead of me.

    Now I know, and in many ways it is even harder to rest in God’s all-knowing peace and provision.  Now I want to just throw up my hands and say, “You’ve got to be kidding me!  Enough!  When is enough!”  I got a taste of  “the good life”, and I don’t want to go back.

    When in reality the good life is still now, and the good life was back then. 

    Today I have John.  We have a future. 

    Back then I had John.  And we had a future. 

    “For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.” Jeremiah 29:11 (NLT)

    This is just proof, as we were told, that a heart transplant is not a cure.  It’s just a better way to manage a life that will sometimes be filled with health and sometimes will not – just like all of our lives.  I don’t know why I am surprised by this every time something happens in my life that I don’t like – like I was blindsided for the first time and never expected to experience any more days of uncertainty.  Jesus specifically says, “Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.” John 16:33 (NLT)  He says “here of earth”.  I will be here on earth until I am in Heaven with Him, so every day has the potentil to be a day that my life halts.  He also says, “MANY trials and sorrows.”  So I will never be completely finished with my trials and sorrows until I am with Him.

    My test is to relish in these times of halt and remain faithful in thanksgiving that God is the same as He was last summer, when He held me tight and allowed me to experience His peace.  These are the times when I get to hold on tight once again, and just halt, so that He can show me that He is still here, His peace is still available, and He will provide for me everything I need.

  • Happy 6 Month Birthday, John!!

    Six months ago today, at this very moment, I was standing in the ICU waiting room on the fifth floor of Duke Hospital.  John’s parents were there with me, and his sister, Jamie, and brother-in-law, Will, had just arrived from Georgia. John had gotten matched with a heart, and we were waiting for the nurse to come and tell us it was time for us to see him for the last time before his transplant.

    I remember her coming into the waiting room.  We weren’t the only family in there.  Others were waiting, too, to see their loved one a last time before visiting hours ended.  Typically only two family members are allowed back at a time, but this time she told us we all needed to come back. 

    I walked out of the room first and started shaking, and not crying, but just breathing hard.  Jamie walked with me with her arm around me, and we squeezed each other hard.

    At the end of John’s bed was the machine as tall as me that had kept him alive for the previous two days.  This machine had a name, ECHMO, which confused me at first, because it took me several hours after he was hooked up to it to realize that its real name is LIFE SUPPORT.

    I looked at John.  I want to say he looked peaceful.  But he did not.  Every part of his body had some type of tube coming out of it.  I knew that this was the next step – only not the last step.  John was unresponsive to commands even though he was off of all sedation medications.  The doctor told me, “We’re going to take him into surgery, but you need to know that he may not wake up.”

    We stood around John’s bed as doctors and nurses hurried around us preparing him – disconnecting and reconnecting medicines, transferring his oxygen and tubes to portable versions that could take him into the operating room.  I felt like I had no time.  There was so much I needed to say to him to comfort him to love him, but he had to go.

    I asked Will to pray over John, and as I held John’s hand, Will prayed.  We then left the room, stood in the hall and waited for his bed to be rolled down the hall.  Finally, he came out – and ECHMO followed.

    I remember watching John go right as I went left to the surgery waiting room.  And I remember feeling closer to my Heavenly Father than I had ever felt before and than I have ever felt since.

    Surrender.  That was my only choice.  In most prayers of my past I felt like there was an element of responsibility or control that I had.  I could try harder, make better decisions, work more at it, and then God would help me.  But with this prayer, to save John’s life, there was absolutely nothing I could do.

    I laid John down at Jesus’s feet that night – again – after laying him down the week before when he got so sick. I knew God may take John from me.  I knew John may be disabled for life.  I knew.  And yet the only thing I could do was lay him down – give him to Jesus – and ask for Him to hear my prayer and answer it.

    You would think that I would feel out-of-control, frantic, fearful that’s God’s will was not my own.  But I wasn’t.  I knew that God’s will was perfect – no matter what happened.

    And in those moments I experienced divine peace.  The peace that the Bible describes, but I had never experienced.  The peace that transcends all understanding (Philippians 4:7).  And, wow, did it transcend understanding. 

    So tonight, six months later, I praise my Heavenly Father, whom I have the awesome privilege of knowing as a person who talks to me daily, and I thank Him for each extra day with my precious husband, John, that He has blessed me with, and for allowing me to experience His presence in a way that I never had before so that I can be a witness to the reality of the Cross available to every person on earth.

    Happy 6 Month Birthday, John!  You are one of God’s many miracles! 

  • Peace

    This, the second week of Advent, we meditate on Jesus as the Prince of Peace.
    I often think about what is the one, most important thing that I have learned most over the past several months.  What do I wish I could share with everyone I meet and have them truly understand it and experience it the way I have?  What does my heart ache for others to know about Jesus?  It has to be that He is the Prince of Peace.
    “Rejoice in the Lord always, I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all.  The Lord in near.  Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.  And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:4-7

    I remember being confused in times past by “the peace of God which transcends all understanding” because I did not feel that peace.  I was constantly anxious about my future, my wants, my hopes, my dreams.  I continually prayed that God would give me this kind of peace.

    And then he did.  But not until after I surrendered to Him.
    It was through the surrendering that led me to be capable of experiencing His peace, and it was the circumstances He allowed that led me to experience it.  It certainly is the peace that has no understanding, no basis, no logic, no formula because it is supernatural.  It is from God himself living within me and me surrendering to that Life.
    His peace is amazing.  It allows you to wake up each morning not knowing what the sunset will bring and have hope that no matter what you will be perfectly fine in Him.
    I wish I could say that every one of my days is like some of those that I have experienced over the past several months, but they have not been.  Each day is a new challenge to surrender.  And then, only then, does the peace come.

  • Happy 4 Month Birthday, John!

    Happy 4 Month Birthday, John!!!

    As you can imagine, this holiday season we are experiencing more joy, hope, and thankfulness than ever before and than ever can be imagined. However, deep within we are also in a continued state of mourning for the life that was lost and the family that is having to endure this holiday without him. We know firsthand what that feels like with the loss of my mom, but we do not know what it is like from a sudden event of tragedy from a person who had a full life still to live. We are in constant prayer for his family and ask you to please pray for them, too.

    This past week John had another biopsy. The last one showed a one rejection, so we we were beyond thankfulness when the biopsy this past week came back as ZERO REJECTION! We just cannot believe how blessed we have been.

    John and I have had a full month. We went home to Georgia for Thanksgiving and for the GA/GA Tech game. It was my first game with John this season. He went to the TN game, but I was unable to go. It was a wonderful feeling being there with him. Last year, at the last home game, we walked in the stadium, and I started to cry. John asked what was wrong, and I told him I had a feeling that this was going to be our last game together. John was unable to walk to the stadium without stopping several times getting to those last games. I then knew he was seriously sick. So it brought me an indescribable, unexplainable joy to be at the game with him two weekends ago!

    On Thanksgiving day we took a walk around the neighborhood, and John ran a few blocks! He could have continued cardiovascularly, but his legs were what gave out. He’s still building those muscles!

    We sincerely wish each person reading this, and their family, a Christmas filled with peace, and we thank you endlessly for your prayers and support for us. Please pray for all of the people you know and don’t know who are chronically sick this Christmas and for all of the families who have lost loved ones.

    Merry Christmas!