In January of 2000, my future husband & I decided to meet for lunch to discuss our blossoming friendship and "define our relationship", as we two excessively analytical people called it. The definition we decided on at that meeting was "friendship with potential".  We would continue seeing each other regularly, let that become dating naturally, and meet the beginning of April, 3 months later, specifically to "redefine our relationship".  Our friends and family secretly laughed at all this because they could see that we were meant to be if anyone ever was.  They were right, and our parameters very quickly fell by the wayside.  We never made it to our 3-month check-up; we were married April 1st, 2000. 

Our fairytale romance crashed into the wall of reality only a few weeks into our marriage.  I won't go into all the details here; suffice to say, pretty much every trial that you hear about testing marriages, ie. health problems, miscarriage, financial problems, discipline issues (I have a daughter from a previous marriage.), major household repairs, major car repairs, moving, personal issues from the past, etc, etc, hit our first year.  At about 6 months along, we were ready to call it quits; it was just that horrible.

Today, our marriage is INCREDIBLE, everything that was promised by what we saw when dating and more.  Although many small (and often hard) steps contributed to our turn-around, one of the most significant for me was some counsel from my mom.  I was crying to her one day over the lost fairytale, the realization that my husband was very human, NOT Prince Charming, that he would be selfish and hurt me, like it or not.  I said, "I can't trust him not to hurt me.  Quite the opposite.  I can pretty much count on the fact that he will definitely hurt me."  The moment crystallized for me, the, when my mom asked, "yes, but can you trust his love?  Can you trust that tho he gets selfish and hurts you, or unthinkingly puts you down, that he ultimately loves you and doesn't intentionally want to do you harm?"  The answer to that was obvious.  In my previous marriage I'd known what it was to not be able to trust my husband's love.  I knew without question that my current husband loved, loves, LOVES me, and I could put my trust and confidence there.

It took me about 5 years for a "duh" moment to hit, to connect it to God. During these last 6 years of marriage, there've been many, many blessings, but there've also been many, many times when we felt that God had sort of pulled the rug out from under us.  We've often wondered how to trust God (beyond trusting His Sovereignty) when you know you can't expect him to keep you always safe, always happy, always loved.  In fact, according to the Bible, we can expect persecutions, dangers, sword.  Trusting He's in control was some help, but also left a feeling sort of like drudgery "well, just keep your head down and keep plodding along; God knows what He's doing."  BUT we can trust His love!  DUH!  It's only all over the Bible..."Nothing can separate us from His love...God's unfailing love...God so loved...He first loved us...those whom He dearly and tenderly loves...etc, etc, not only that He loves us, but praises to His love because the writers knew this was our reason for hope and faith!