And Two Shall Become One

This article was originally published in the Franklin News-Post.

This week, my wife and I celebrated our 31st wedding anniversary.  I also celebrated the one-year anniversary of having been ordained as a minister at House of Purpose Ministries in Bassett, VA.  This has resulted in the authority and responsibility to minister wedding ceremonies.  I have had the privilege and honor to conduct three such weddings, thus far.  As my wife and I have met with each couple leading up to their big day, we ask about their relationship with Jesus Christ.  In the Christian faith, a wedding and being married is grounded in biblical principles.  We talk about what the bible reveals in terms of what it means to be married.  What we talk about isn’t just something that we have read about.  It is about something we have lived and experienced.

    On a day like your wedding anniversary, it is easy to reflect on the experiences that my wife and I have enjoyed that were pleasurable.  We delight in those moments where we each found the other loveable.  The truth of the matter, a successful marriage is rooted in our ability to put the other ahead of our own needs.  From a worldly or flesh-centered viewpoint, this is a contradiction.  My flesh is selfish.  I want what I want when I want it.  When we were united in marriage in the Christian faith, the bible tells that we became one flesh.  In Mark 10:7-8 “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh; so then that are no longer two, but one flesh.” (NKJV) This should result in us loving our spouse as ourselves.  We are one.

    For much of the early years of our marriage, my wife and I were unequally yoked.  My wife desired a relationship with her Lord and Savior.  It simply was not a priority for me.  My wife raised our children in the church.  I was too broken and ashamed of who I was on the inside to dare take myself around all the “perfect people” at the church.  As a result, my wife endured hardship in our marriage.  Frankly, I struggled with depression and thoughts of suicide.  I did not want to live.  I would make overtures to my wife that I wanted her to leave me.  She resisted.  In fact, in those lowest times of our marriage, she clung to her faith and loved me even deeper.  She would tell me that the vows she took on our wedding day were not merely words that she spoke to me; but, rather it was also a commitment she made before God.

    My wife prayed over me.  And, she prayed for me.  At times in my life that I did not even know it, she was my personal prayer warrior interceding on my behalf with God.  Finally, in February 2009, I experienced a breakthrough.  I was delivered from my depression and suicidal ideation when I moved in forgiveness.  I had been molested as a child.  In my breakthrough, I was finally able to forgive the man who had harmed me all those years ago.  The first morning after I awoke from a night’s sleep, I recall getting out of bed and realizing that I wanted to live.  For the first time in nearly thirty years, I wanted to be alive.  It was at that point that I started to become the husband that my wife deserved.  This entire transformation process did not occur in an instant.  But it did start, and it has continued.

My wife also celebrated a birthday this week.  Our eldest daughter and her husband of just under two years took us to dinner.  During dinner, we were discussing marriage and our anniversary that we would celebrate the following day.  My wife looked at the new bride and groom and reminded them, “It is not easy to love someone that is unlovable.  The source for that kind of love only comes from God.”  I knew, in an instant, that I had been unlovable during some if not most of the first twenty-three years of our marriage.  She is now reaping the benefits of her sacrifice.