Our Very First Home was an Old, Little Trailer

Ken and I got married in December of 1980. He was in seminary and I was in graduate school to get my teaching credential. {My dad insisted we all have a career.} We had very little money. We found this little trailer that we paid $230 a month for and my parents gave us that little, used VW Rabbit. As you can see, I was not raised like the Duggars. I wore short shorts.

Ken remembers being so happy there. I remember being so unhappy. I didn't like so many things that he did and didn't do. I was so critical and not accepting of him. Imagine all the fun we could have had together in that little trailer if I loved him just the way that he was? He has always been a great guy. He will do anything for anybody. He gives and gives and gives of himself. He is so faithful to his family and friends. What was wrong with me?

I was badly affected by this thing called sin. My desire was to rule over him as I wrote about the other day {Genesis 3:16}. I wanted to boss him around and tell him what to do. So many women tell me they weren't bossy and controlling until they got married. They, unfortunately, were bitten by the sin bug also. Getting our way was more important than having an intimate marriage.

This is why older women need to teach young women to love and obey their husbands, to please them, honor and respect them. It goes completely against our natural inclination which is to sin. Most of our natural inclinations are wrong. This is why we must never trust them along with our feelings. We must always be in God's Word and listening to good Bible teachers so that we will do things the right way, instead of the destructive way.

Thankfully, there is a wonderful cure for the sin bug. God's mercy and grace was poured upon us when He took our sin upon the cross, nailing it to the tree, and killing it. Now, all we have to do is believe it. We need to believe we are dead and freed from sin. We can love, honor, respect, obey, and all those others things we are commanded to do for our husbands. We have the God of the universe living within us giving us the power to do it. So now simply "Trust and obey, for there is no other way, to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey."

Let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, 
having our hearts sprinkled clean from an 
evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.
Hebrews 10:22