My Hard Times Testimony
What have I been through?
To start off, I love my parents with all my heart. I do not mean them any disrespect with what I share, but this experience in my life has taught me more than nearly any other thing I have been through.
I want to say that I had two amazing parents, but unfortunately, from my perspective as a child, they weren’t always the greatest spouses to each other. From the outside everything seemed great. My parents were heavily involved with the church. They were even on the church board. They appeared to have it all together. But the fact is, I grew up with fighting in my household. Jealousy. Anger. Weeks of silence, that would one day seem magically better. I remember hiding in the bathroom with my big sister as we waited for the yelling to stop. I grew up with the cops showing up to our house more than once. I went to bed with the sounds of arguing and even woke up to it in the mornings. I grew up with a parent even going to jail for a night the fighting was so bad. This went on for years and years. Divorce was an ever looming threat anytime things got bad.
How did I respond?
To say the least, I think I was damaged from a relationship point of view at an early age. I didn’t know what healthy conflict looked like. I didn’t know how to resolve a disagreement with someone, because as much as I was witness to the fighting, I rarely witnessed an apology or resolution. Sadly, anytime fighting happened, things of the past were used as weaponry against another. I think this gave me a twisted view of forgiveness.
Where was I destined to go? I truly believed at a young age that I did not believe in marriage because of how tainted it had become. Thank God I never stopped believing in Love. I have always been a romantic. I used to think that every time the fighting stopped, it could be the last time and things would be better. I remember my dad and I were in a car accident in the midst of one of their fights, and all the sudden everything was better… but not for very long.
How did God respond?
In the thick of this mess at the age of 15, God intervened. He did not fix my parents marriage, but gave me my future wife to help mend the damage that had been done to my perceptions of relationships.
Anytime I did something wrong, I would cry and be so fearful that this would be held against me forever. But even as a new Christian as she was, my wife showed me forgiveness as it was shown in the Bible. She forgot my wrongdoings and just loved me. I was jealous, and she would console me and assure me that I was the only one for her. In my insecure state, she told me she loved me as her husband, soulmate, and best friend. This is all from the immature age of 15. God rescued me while my heart was still able to be molded and shaped, with my wife as the primary tool, working with the power of His spirit. We are nowhere close to perfect but our love submits to this verse- "Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins."- 1 Peter 4:8
Mere months after I married my wife, my parents marriage ended in divorce. My wife’s parents divorced when she was just a child. The statistics are already insane, with 1 in 2 modern marriages ending in divorce. They say that the odds for children of divorce to get divorced themselves is about 3 in 4. The odds can feel stacked against us.
Where is my hope now?
God gave me my wife and through her showed me what He meant for marriage to be. The great mystery describe in Ephesians 5:23,24,32 For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. 32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. 33 To sum up, each one of you is to love his wife as himself, and the wife is to respect her husband.
When we were in premarital counseling, our pastor drew us a triangle, placing each of us at one point, and God at the top. He showed us that if we press close to each other without God, we get further from Him, but if we both press equally towards God, we in turn get closer to each other. I know we are still young and will experience many more trials, but at 27 we have over a decade under our belts together and we now have a wonderful son and a happy family. We are striving to keep God at the center, and trusting Him to continue to sustain us- Matthew 6:33 But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you. 34 Therefore don’t worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
I will not let a statistic define me. God is the foundation of our lives and our marriage, and He will give us the strength to handle anything that comes our way.
When we were in premarital counseling, our pastor drew us a triangle, placing each of us at one point, and God at the top. He showed us that if we press close to each other without God, we get further from Him, but if we both press equally towards God, we in turn get closer to each other. I know we are still young and will experience many more trials, but at 27 we have over a decade under our belts together and we now have a wonderful son and a happy family. We are striving to keep God at the center, and trusting Him to continue to sustain us- Matthew 6:33 But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you. 34 Therefore don’t worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
I will not let a statistic define me. God is the foundation of our lives and our marriage, and He will give us the strength to handle anything that comes our way.
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