“Oh my gosh, that is not what I said at all. You got it all wrong. Do you really listen or just wait for your turn to talk? I hate that you don’t hear what I am saying. You just don’t understand me or care enough to really listen to what I am saying. Either way I am done with trying to talk to you about this!”

When I wrote my last blog Chart the Course, directed at single women, I knew that I would be following up with some guidance for married women with Stay the Course. That plan has changed. After being involved in a critical situation over the weekend I have been given a new perspective on the phrase “stay the course” and I would like to share that with you instead.

On Saturday afternoon we went out for a sail. Another couple would be joining us on the lake in their motor boat. We set a course to sail about a mile out beyond an island and join our friends for a bit then return to the marina. That was our plan.

We were in route to our destination, our friends passed us and we followed. There were no signs of inclement weather in sight.  The water was calm and the winds were light. It was smooth sailing for us. After being on the water about 30 minutes the skies began to grow dark. We thought it best to turn and head in.Then suddenly out of nowhere a gust of wind knocked us over. The boat uprighted itself but the winds and waves made it very difficult to maneuver. We were not going to be able to make it back to the marina. Our friends motorboat was strong enough to make it to a dock safely but we were forced to stay on the lake in a most dangerous situation.

An unforeseen hazard had interfered with our course.  We still were determined to return to the marina safely but we had  to modify our course. We weren’t giving up, we just had to detour. We had to ride out this storm first. We agreed we would stay in the cockpit together and attempt to keep our boat from hitting anything.

During that frantic time on the lake I became so angry about being overtaken by the storm. I was mad we hadn’t taken better precaution to get the sails reefed when the sky started clouding up. I was mad I couldn’t get to my life jacket because it was down in the cabin. I was furious that I felt helpless. I even yelled at the man who I love the most. Then I saw him with all his strength holding on to the tiller in great effort to protect us and I just had to tell him I loved him. No external circumstances were going to interfere with that. Later that evening we were able to return to the marina. We had to be towed in but we got back to where we wanted to be.

As I prepared to write this blog I was shown the similarities between my situation on the lake and facing a crisis in marriage. I felt I needed to pass this along to you.

When you are in the midst of uncertainty in your marriage it feels as if you are helpless in a storm.  You are holding on with all your strength and you are trying not to give up. You are also scared and angry. You may say things you regret. Your circumstances are causing you to think you may not survive. The only thing you want is for it to just be back the way it was when it was good, when it was smooth sailing.

A lie would tell you it can’t happen, but God promises it can.

Hebrews 10: 35-36  So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded. You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised.

If there is a storm in your marriage right now please don’t give up hope. If you will stay the course by being persistent, remembering your love for one another and praying to our Father for help, you will survive this storm and be better for it. So put your lifejacket on and be the best first mate you can be.

I am writing this blog post from a hotel room where I came to have a little alone time. Some people may not enjoy the solitude but I sure do. I also enjoy every chance I get to escape with my husband as well. This time though was one of the times I needed the quiet to just write and read and really catch up on time with myself. I had hoped to write more than I have while here but the words were just not coming, until room service man brought my coffee!

While placing the tray of coffee down he asked how my morning was going, I replied that I was just beginning to write a blog post on marriage and boy did his face light up.  He preceded to tell me in the quick time he was here that he and his girlfriend were discussing marriage and how they were scared that the longevity of marriage isn’t what it used to be. He felt the odds may be against them. This made me very sad to think young couples now enter into a marriage knowing that society encourages a way out if you aren’t happy and it’s no big deal if you don’t last until death do you part. He was curious why you don’t hear of 50 plus year marriages as often anymore.

This prompted me to think about marriage in comparison to making a long voyage. When getting my sailing certification I made short voyages every day for six days and even for those we had to chart the course. We had to take into consideration all the variables such as speed of the winds, the currents, tides, water depths and any hazards. I knew the importance of having a course before heading out into the vast ocean with just enthusiasm and my love of the sea. Newlyweds often embrace marriage with only their love of one another and their excitement for the new journey that lies ahead. This is where they enter treacherous waters because they didn’t chart the course.

A valuable way to eliminate some of the unforeseen dangers is to participate in Premarital Counseling. It is an excellent way to prepare the navigation for your marriage. Premarital Counseling provides a platform to ensure that each person knows as much as possible about the other and how to be equipped to handle any of the hazards that can come up during the course of marriage. Here are a few important situations to be discussed and agreed upon before attempting to becoming one.  Faith, Boundaries, Past, Children, and Finances. and a link to a great article that covers these and more in detail. Ten things to discuss pre-marriage.

I know some pastors require the couple to receive 10 hours of Premarital Counseling for first time marriages before he will marry them. In my opinion this is not near enough. You should really take the opportunity to discuss  serious issues with the person you will be spending a lifetime and chart your course together. You will probably spend hundreds of hours discussing the details for the wedding, the reception and the honeymoon. Don’t you think you should give equal time to the most important and longest lasting relationship of your life?

I hope this motivates you engaged women to want to chart the course for your marriage. My next post will be Stay the Course and will provide those of us en route to not give up. I want to encourage you wives who have achieved more years of marriage to come along side of a newer wife and mentor her as instructed in Titus 2:3-5.  Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good. 4 Then they can urge the younger women to love their husbands and children, 5 to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God.

I recently heard a lady say her marriage was just hanging on by a thread. My reaction was “I hope that thread is Kevlar”.  If you are unfamiliar with thread, Kevlar is a commercial grade thread that is used on items that need strong seams such as work gloves, backpacks, mattresses, and bullet proof vests. It also is used on items that need to withstand high heat or be stretched some. So you can see why I hoped that the thread used to weave her marriage together was figuratively speaking Kevlar. Because what marriage doesn’t need to have reinforced seams, be stretched a little and be able to withstand those heated conversations.

Later I began to ponder the idiom of “hanging by a thread” I even went as far as looking it up to see what it implied. According to the Cambridge Dictionary “If a serious situation hangs by a thread then it means that even a slight change can decide what will happen and that a bad result such as death, failure etc. is likely”.

How ominous is that, living in a marriage that is being held together by a thread. Thinking that with one more pull the thread breaks and it’s bye bye marriage. So sad, but I suddenly could relate to her choice of words. I had been there. I had experienced that feeling of we are barely hanging on and my marriage is about to die.

 I did have a “Kevlar” thread holding my marriage together though.  It was the divine thread made of three cords that wasn’t going to be broken easily either. It held together long enough for us to get the help we needed. That help came from a conference called “Weekend to Remember”. We were fortunate enough to have some friends who knew the importance of having God woven into a marriage and they wanted to send us to this conference.

My husband was optimistic but I looked at it as a last-ditch effort and if I went I could at least say I tried. We attended that Weekend to Remember in 2004. Now in 2016 we have since gone back again and taken other couples from our church. We have bought tickets for wedding gifts and given it as a recommendation to other couples whose marriage is suffering, because we know first hand how God can work miracles in your marriage even when all that’s left is a single thin thread and you are making a last-ditch effort.

We were given some great information that weekend from wonderful speakers. The thing that had the greatest impact on restoring our marriage was the requirement of the Saturday night “Date Night”. We had a huge breakthrough on that night in which we isolated ourselves from everyone and stayed focused on just each other. We talked thru everything that had been stored in our hearts for years that we had been pulling from to hurt one another with. We were up most of the night but we eliminated it all. We were no longer hanging by a thread. We were woven so tight, even more so than the day we married.

I suggest if you are having any feelings that your marriage is hanging by a thread that you give God the chance to show you how He can be a part of your marriage and if possible attend a Weekend to Remember, neither will you regret. And never forget the Power of our God. He wants so much to restore your marriage!

I can’t deny the fact that you like me, right now you like me. ” Remember this from Sally Field’s Academy Award acceptance speech? It was misquoted a lot as “You like me, you really like me”. Either way the sentiment is the same. To feel liked is so endearing and a huge compliment, perhaps more than hearing I love you. Love often comes in the sense of obligation and what we were taught to do. We were told you must love at all times, show love, love your neighbor as yourself, etc. For a married couple, saying I love you can certainly come across as a habitual saying as you part ways or end a text/phone call.  The requirement of love is even written in your vows; do you promise to love, honor and so forth. Yes, I promise no matter how rough it gets, for better or for worse and all that jazz, that I will keep on loving you. Unfortunately it doesn’t always happen. There are couples who divorce but will still say they love each other and want the best for the other but can’t stay married. In my opinion I don’t believe they would divorce if they really liked each other.  I believe a couple achieves a stronger bond to their relationship if they like each other, I mean truly like the characteristics of their spouse. It certainly plays a vital part in my marriage. 

Going thru the motions of loving your husband can trivialize your relationship. You each have your own personalities and the actions you display may not always sit well with the other. You start feeling like this is just not that great of a marriage. You may think you are always in opposition to him or put off by his behavior. You then become distant and begin living as a discontent married couple. Not a good path to be on! You will want to redirect this dislike for your husband quickly and I have a suggestion as to how. Try focusing on the things you like about him, then begin to speak some of those things out loud to him everyday. For example, “ I really like you when I see you engaging in our children’s lives”, or “I really like that you workout and take care of yourself.” I believe him hearing of the things he does that excite you and make you proud will be an encouragement to him to do more of the things that make you like him. It will also redirect your heart to recognize more of what you do like about him then dislike. I also suggest that you look at yourself and where your critical spirit is coming from. Are you making his irritating behavior a bigger deal than it really is? So many times our husband’s behavior that we don’t like is actually blown out of proportion as a result of our own issues or bad mood. Always take time to look within first. Being critical can prevent you from seeing and appreciating all that’s truly likable about your husband. After all, we may all need to feel loved but we really want to be liked too.