While my husband was making dinner the other night, our favorite song came on the iPod player. I looked up from whatever I was doing and saw my husband beckoning me to join him; I complied with a smile and walked over. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I was hopeful enough to kick off my fuzzy slippers just in case I was walking into something romantic. To my amazement and delight, when I got to the kitchen he held out his hand. I took it, he grabbed my waist, and we danced.

As we danced together, I was filled with so much joy that I had to hold back happy tears. My face began to hurt because I couldn’t stop grinning from ear to ear.  I felt like I was living in a fairy tale.

Later on that night I curiously asked what compelled him to turn on our song and dance with me. He responded honestly, “I didn’t put the song on, it was just the song that came on when I put on my iPod.”

I replied, “Oh, I thought you had put it on intentionally.”

He responded something to the effect of, “Well, God put it on.”

My husband so often surprises me. He’s not really “religious,” so to speak, but sometimes faith seems to come so much more naturally to him than it does to me.

This thought God put it on got me thinking, and reminded me of something we’ve been told since our marriage preparation: our marriage is made of three – my husband, me, and God. We each play a significant role in our marriage; we each make a corner of triangle. When we said our vows, the Deacon stood in the aisle so that he was between the crowd and us –not between the altar and us. The significance for this was that the triangle would not be broken.

This concept helped me a lot during deployment. My husband wasn’t physically with me, so one corner didn’t feel quite as strong, but God carried us through the hardest times. He carried me through my darkest days. I was never alone. I leaned, or sometimes fell, so heavily on God, that it was impossible to forget that he was playing a significant role in our marriage.

However, now that we’re living together… I guess I may have forgotten. Thankfully, my husband reminded me, and I realized that God and my husband worked together to take an ordinary moment and create an extraordinary one.

How about you? How did God work in your marriage recently? Did you almost miss it like me?

_______________

Popularity: 3% [?]

Image courtesy of: http://wedding-planning-checklist.biz/2012/02/wedding-rings/

Vow renewal is a topic I had never thought about except for those who have hit maybe fifty or sixty year anniversaries. My husband and I have only been married about eight years. The idea of vow renewal seems a little unnecessary.

Then I was asked a question one day about where to find vows for renewing a military marriage, say after a deployment. I had never looked for such a thing. The research started. I found all kinds of answers. Some vows I found were people just wanting to be romantic because they never got the fairytale wedding they always wanted and used a vow renewal ceremony to do that. A few were adamantly opposed to vow renewal. They figured they made that promise once, why would they need to do it again? And then, I found a third group. This last group renewed their vows, but many of them had been through a traumatic experience like overcoming a terrible illness or working through infidelity in their marriage. Some had even been separated for long periods of time. They were physically back in the same place and simply wanted to reaffirm their commitment.

This third group made sense to me. Military life can bring about some traumatic experiences and some long separations. The toll on marriages can be tremendous. In “normal” life, marriage can be a challenge, one we only succeed in through the power of an Almighty God. Military marriage – well, that can be a whole different ball game, but the same God is the only way we survive.

Our vows on our wedding day were meant whole-heartedly, believing in the spouse God had given and making a covenant to
both them and God that we would last a lifetime. But no matter what we know when we get married, life brings about many things that we never anticipated. It can be hard, and it is certainly work regardless of how much love we feel. Being geographically single for a year at a time, moving for the fourth time in three years, helping a spouse work through the trauma of combat, or watching our friend’s marriage fall apart, they are all things we did not anticipate and yet this is what life has brought us.

The vow renewal I didn’t think would be necessary for another forty or fifty years becomes very meaningful at the end of a struggle or even in the midst of it. Renewing my commitment to both God and my spouse happens in my heart daily, but a more formal time when we verbalize the words in front of those who have walked this path with us doesn’t seem like such a crazy idea after all.

So – I said my vows to my husband almost eight years ago. But if we had the ceremony today, these are the words I would choose.

“When we joined hands eight years ago, we promised to love and cherish each other for better or for worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health as long as we both shall live. Today, I understand so much more about what those words mean – to love you through formal balls and deployments, paydays and reintegration, PCSs and promotions. Today, I promise to do everything in my power to combat the evil that could so easily destroy our marriage and to actively seek the joy that God has promised. It means that, regardless of what this military life brings, I will remain faithful to the covenant I made on our wedding day through the strength and power of God alone. That is my promise to you.”

Have you renewed your vows? Did you write your own? Have you been a part of a unit that has done this as a part of reintegration or pre-deployment? What are your thoughts on vow renewal? Do you have any resources you have used for this? Any of them military specific?

Me? Well, when my husband comes home today, I plan to plant a smacker on him and remind him of the promise I made years ago. God has reminded me again of the blessing He has given through my husband and the responsibility He has given me in this marriage. I plan to fight for my marriage, and continue to pray because God is the only one who can truly sustain it.

Popularity: 6% [?]