Today is my 46th anniversary. Once again I’m celebrating the many marriage miracles from the Lord that brought my husband, Steve, and I to this day. My marriage miracle story this month is from another wife who recently celebrated her 46th anniversary. She, too, is celebrating God’s faithfulness in her marriage over the years.
Delivered From A Fling With Frivolous Fun and Financial Gain
Marie, who had never been married, entered her marriage with a little something extra—a three-year-old son, named Bobby. It was quite an adjustment for her husband, David, to suddenly be a husband and a father. He courageously made his former bachelor pad into a home for his new family. Here is the marriage miracle story that Marie told me. The story is true, but the names have been changed.
As a teenager, Bobby got into lots of trouble. He acted out by destroying things in the house. He was rebellious and turned on everything we said. If we put him on restriction, he would open his bedroom window and leave. David butted heads often with Bobby.
During this difficult time, I was offered a job which included traveling Monday through Friday. I was worn out from our son’s rebellion and from the constant conflict between David and Bobby. I went to a counselor who told me to leave when things heated up in the house between the two. The counselor meant for a brief getaway, but I decided to “leave” five days a week by taking this job. My husband agreed because the money was good.
I traveled with two other women who, although also married, believed you should have fun while on the road. I had been a Christian for five years, but went along with the fun they had by joining them in drinking, dancing and flirting with men in bars.
I felt like I was in a different world. It felt good at first to escape my home life.
As I made money and had fun, I felt myself drifting far from my husband.
One Sunday the message in church was about when a Christian falls. The pastor said it was like a basketball player, that if you got hurt, you need to sit on the sidelines. I did feel like I was hurt.
One evening while on the road, I attended a nationally-televised basketball game with the two women and the men they brought along. Will my husband see me if he’s watching this on TV? I wondered.
I realized that drinking was becoming a problem.
I did careless things when I drank, like one evening when I was drinking while out with my husband, I got drunk and went into the Gulf and tried to swim to a sandbar at midnight.
I saw that David was getting tired of it all, and Bobby was still misbehaving and butting heads with him.
I continued to go to church and began to ask myself, Should I be doing this? as far as my job and the fun time I was having. But then I’d be right back at it.
Because I was enjoying myself while away from David, I thought maybe I needed to ask him for a divorce.
So I went home at the end of the week and said, “I don’t think we should be married anymore.”
“We need to talk,” David said.
So we talked and talked. I realized I still loved David who said, “I’m going to try harder.”
David also said, “I’m going to go to church with you,” and he did.
Even so, I was back at my job and still drinking on Monday.
However, I woke up in the middle of the night one night that week and left a note saying, “I can’t do this anymore.”
I walked away from the money and the other temptations to save our marriage. I realized there was a price to the fun, and it wasn’t worth it.
Turning away from drinking was a process. But then our son started drinking, and I didn’t want to be a stumbling block, so I gave it up totally.People used to say to me, “You’re so much fun when you drink,” but even after I stopped, I could still have fun, and people would think I was drinking. Thankfully, my husband was never much of a drinker.
While I worked at my job for an insurance agency, my husband got laid off. Even so, after that God began to bless us. I was offered a new job in a different town, where we decided to move, and my husband found a job there right away.
God took care of our needs as we stopped focusing on money. These verses came to mind as I thought about how God was taking care of us: “Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass, which is alive in the field today, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith!” (Luke 12:27-28 ESV)
I learned that money could never have bought me the happiness I have with my husband.
When we moved, Bobby didn’t go with us. He stayed behind and lived with my parents. Then he tried to live with us, but it didn’t work out. He and David still didn’t get along. He moved in with an older couple at age 16. He has continued to have troubles over the years, but I’ve had to let go of him.
David stopped going to church for quite a while, despite his promise to go to church with me. But then suddenly one Sunday morning, he got ready for church and has been going since. Now he’s part of the worship team.
My two-month fling with having fun and making money took place ten years into our marriage. Now we’ve been married 46 years and have a good life together.
In 1995, on our 20th anniversary, I wrote a Happy Anniversary letter to my husband, where I compared our marriage to a canoe ride and how it seemed to me that so far my husband had been doing most of the paddling. I wrote, “I have sat still for so long letting you do all the work. I promise for the next twenty years to paddle along with you as we continue the ride of our life in the same canoe.”
Marie has gone beyond that 20 years and is still paddling along with her husband to make their marriage work, and she continues to experience God’s faithfulness.
If you have a marriage miracle story from your own marriage that you want to share with others, please email me at emcreasman@aol.com.
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