It's great when these famous women in the media like Sharon Osbourne and Jane Fonda can realize later in their life that God's ways are indeed best. Jane was on Katie and said, "I would have loved being married to one man for all of my life. It is such a beautiful thing!"
I realize a lot of you are in difficult marriages. I hear it in your "voice" when you comment on my blog or email me. I just want to encourage you to hang in there. It will most likely get much better. I have heard that people who stick it out instead of getting divorced are much happier just five years later.
I realize a lot of you are in difficult marriages. I hear it in your "voice" when you comment on my blog or email me. I just want to encourage you to hang in there. It will most likely get much better. I have heard that people who stick it out instead of getting divorced are much happier just five years later.
Marriage isn't usually easy. We marry someone so different than us. We are all incompatible. We all have our own likes and dislikes. He is a man, you are a woman. However, the more unselfish you can become {the more like Jesus}, the easier your marriage will become and you will be much happier. I love growing old with Ken. I am glad I stuck it out even when we weren't getting along very well. Divorce wasn't in our vocabulary.
I enjoy Sunday afternoons watching football together.
I love taking walks every afternoon holding hands.
I love walking on the beach every Saturday and going out to breakfast.
I love how he is my biggest cheerleader for me writing this blog,
my fiercest defender, and even, occasionally, writes a post for me.
I love going to church with him and his arm around me
as we sing praising the Lord.
Mostly, I love that he loves my children just as much as I do.
He wants to hear all the details of their lives and prays for them with me every day.
I love having devotions with him and hearing his voice
as he prays for all the things that concern us.
I love that we see eye to eye on all the most important things in life,
believing in Jesus, as well as politics, eating healthy, etc.
We share our aches and pains with each other as we grow older. Our hair is graying and we're getting wrinkled. {I am getting wrinkled a lot faster than he is, that's for sure!}
Life is definitely beautiful, as Jane Fonda stated, growing older with one man. God's ways are best. Occasionally, even those in the secular media are able to see it and say it.
He has made everything beautiful in its time.
Ecclesiastes 3:11
Happy 32nd Anniversary to my amazing husband!
Logging you in...
Tiffany · 639 weeks ago
kathy · 639 weeks ago
I was married to a man for 28 years. We met when I was 17, and 4 months later and pregnant we married. I had just turned 18, and he 23. Four years later there were 4 children. He was a workaholic during most of those years. I did 95% of the raising of the kids.
I will skip all the details of all those years, but I could share hundreds of stories of how hard I tried to make it work. All the many years of counseling not only for myself but the children that were showing the signs of growing up in a tumultuous family. Even though by all appearances he was growing in the faith, it was a different view for those of us who knew him intimately.
I have been a strong believer through it all. In fact my faith I'm sure is what saved me from the numerous times I contemplated suicide. The hypocrisy was one of the hardest things to live with. Little did I know that the many steps of trying to make that relationship right was going to give me the strength to walk away from it 7 years ago.
I hate divorce also. If asked, I would always profess, when I was in that relationship, people just give up too easily, and they do many times. I hate to admit it, but I did have an attitude about divorced people. There are as many stories and reasons for it as there are people who choose that route. I may not always agree with how they handled themselves, or what lead to it. I do know it is most always painful and pray that there will have been lessons learned.
My parents, who are strong believers, would try and convince me it would be ok and they would help me and the kids if I wanted to leave him. I would not budge. It was just not an option for me.
Don't get me wrong I read all your comments and I get it. It's hard sometimes for those of you that have a devoted, humble and loving husband to imagine what it's like for those who don't.
I am married again and it's not a fairy tale. We have had some issues but as soon as they arose he was ready and willing to seek help with me. Being married to someone who is humble is what makes all the difference in the world. Being treated with respect and love, and not manipulated and controlled helps me look beyond his fallen nature. I know he feels the same about me.
I could write a book on my amazing faith journey through marriage and divorce. I guess I just felt the need to share with you that there are those of us that have lived a whole different story, and yet still held on to our faith every step of the way.
I'm glad you write what you do, and hope others find strength to keep trying in their relationships. I know it inspires me even though I'm in a second marriage.
I suppose the rest of my life I will feel some envy for those, such as yourself, who have so far and probably will make it through your whole life with just one husband. Your family, along with a few of my "friends", family pictures on facebook will continue to haunt me somewhat. Even if I would have stayed with him though it would have always been a facade. I would have loved to have the "real deal".
I'm sure your family life is as beautiful as you share. I always hope and pray that the smiling faces and lovely stories that distant friends share on f/b are as wonderful as they make it look on the net.
My 4 children will always carry the scars of childhood. I believe the faith I showed them all those years of growing up attributed to the caring people they all are. I continue to hope and pray their relationship with God becomes a more personal one. Hypocrisy has left them all confused in that area. Being in church every Sunday doesn't guarantee your children to have a relationship with God.
One last thing I have to share is how I will be eternally grateful for the Divine Mercy our Lord has shown me through all the years of heartache and tears. I could have never made it without Him and His love. One of my major goals is to always share that with others. To show them love no matter where they are in life or what road they are on.
May the fragrance of Jesus be upon my life, so that even entering or leaving a room, some lingering sense of God's presence will draw hearts to seek Him.
Keep up the good work Lori. A blessed New Year to you and yours.
Joluise · 639 weeks ago
shopannies 31p · 639 weeks ago
@Ssomerskys · 639 weeks ago
Shelley · 639 weeks ago
CK in KC · 639 weeks ago
Ken · 639 weeks ago
I am very proud and pleased with Lori's many words of wisdom ingrained in her by the Spirit through her consistent study of God's Word and all of the many marriage books and magazines she is always reading. It amuses me sometimes to see comments about all the exceptions to God's ideals. We all know exceptions occur in this imperfect world, but the exceptions are almost always caused by sin, and missing the mark of doing things God's way.
We need the Loris and the preachers of the world to teach God's Word and His ideals plain and simple, so that the Spirit can work in the lives of God's children. The family of God is filled with imperfect people, flaws in husbands and wives, yet we are told to believe that the God of the universe has come to make His home within our hearts and minds, and whole being. We are the temple of the living God, and our imperfect being houses complete perfection. His desire is that we become "like Jesus" and this must mean shooting at all of God's ideals with no exceptions.
Grace and forgiveness abounds to all of the exceptions to God's ideals, but I would hope that Lori's readers would understand that truth always remains truth, even when I do not live up to it. To treat all of God's Word as one big exception filled with grace is to miss out on what God desires to do with our lives.
God is in the business of transforming lives and making us more like Jesus. He does this with His truth that pierces to our soul where His Spirit can take the seeds of truth and make us new… brand new… in the gardens of our hearts and minds. Truth is the only vehicle that can move us from where we are now with any sinful thoughts and habits to where God desires to take us. He wants to take us to a place where our lives shine His truth, not the exceptions, for all the world to see Jesus in you and in me.
Yes, Jesus can and does shine even in the exceptions when grace and love abounds. Thank you God for your Son who delivers us all from sin and makes us whole. We are delivered from sin the moment we believe in the truth of Christ’s saving grace on the cross, and we are made whole in every area of life that we surrender to Jesus through faith. That faith is in the truth, not in the exceptions. If we live a life believing exceptions all day long we miss out on what God is able to do in our lives, for we set standards far below His ideals. No, to grow in Christ demands that we first know God’s Word, and His truth, looking to a perfect Jesus as our model for life, not a weak and dying world, nor a world filled with weak believers.
The impotence of the church today comes from a lack of faith in God and God’s Word. I pray regularly and thank the Lord for my faith, and then ask for more faith to believe God is all that He has to say to me. It is so easy like Peter, to take my eyes off of Jesus and see the stormy sea below my feet, and to watch the imperfections of others as an excuse for my failings. This is not the design of the Christian life to look to forgiveness and grace before desiring perfection. No, if God calls you and me perfect in Christ, should not our heart and mind follow by faith to a spiritual place so much higher than exception upon exception?
Do not mistake my words. God accepts each and every one of us right where we are in our lives; complete and perfect love and acceptance. We can rest in Him no matter what we have done, even if we fell short this very minute. There is no guilt or condemnation in Christ Jesus, but it is time for many believers to “leave the elementary teachings of Christ and go on to maturity (perfection in KJV)” (Hebrews 6:1).
Ken · 639 weeks ago
I appeal to those who continue to live their lives based on exceptions to God’s ideal, to not use God’s grace as an excuse to not grow in the knowledge and maturity of God’s Word. Allow God’s Word and His truths to speak to your hearts without exception and to believe in all of His promises, even those that are hard to understand and accept. Lori and I have found so many of God’s promises coming true in our lives, and we wait with confident expectation that each and every one of them will be fulfilled to the degree we are willing to believe them in this life.
May God bless you all this wonderful New Year as you seek to love and serve our God and Savior, and may we all give Him His rightful place as King over all in our lives, without exception.
"Finally, brothers, good-bye. Aim for perfection, listen to my appeal, be of one mind, live in peace. And the God of love and peace will be with you" (2 Corinthians 13:11)
Ken · 639 weeks ago
Lori and I have our imperfections, but we have learned that we tend to get what we focus upon and believe in our lives. Instead of focusing on sin we know now that we must focus instead on what God says is true. The more I try to stop sinning the harder it seems to get. The more I focus on living out my New Life IN Christ, the more sin seems to disappear in my life.
Jesus says "the truth will set you free" for reason, because it is the only power by which the heart and mind is changed. We can't expect to move to where God wants us without an honest acceptance of all He has to say to us in His Word, even those things I have yet to measure up to.
Grace abounds,but how much more does Truth ... that is Jesus! "For I am the way the truth and the life!"
Thanks again for your comment! ken
Cynthia Berenger · 638 weeks ago
Agape always,
Cynthia
Lindy · 636 weeks ago
Rocky Mountain Woman · 635 weeks ago
jdaniel4smom 52p · 635 weeks ago
artmusedog 45p · 635 weeks ago
(A Creative Harbor) ^_^
Sue at NapervilleNow · 635 weeks ago
sandy · 635 weeks ago
although it's my second marriage, it's been a blessing.
Such a nice post and a very Happy Anniversary
to you both.
Sandy
jimvh 45p · 635 weeks ago
Congratulations on your 32nd. That is way past the seven-year itch. In a month, Mrs. Jim and I will celebrate our 40th. It is my second marriage, her first.
..
Jim · 635 weeks ago
nick · 635 weeks ago
domesstique 17p · 635 weeks ago
All the best,
Scudds
lmkazmierczak 32p · 635 weeks ago
Tracy · 635 weeks ago
He oft just before our silver anniversary
But I am in a much better place now and hope that Od has a new soul mate for me .happy anniversary
Judie McEwen · 635 weeks ago
Jenny Matlock · 635 weeks ago
If I was not in a wonderful, loving relationship with Mr. Jenny, I might be insanely Jealous of yours.... (((winkwink)))
Thanks for linking to the letter J...
Great Job!
A+