a sheltering marriage

Things have been quiet around here lately. Facebook keeps reminding me of the last two years of Write 31 Days in which I wrote actual words on most of the days of October. But the last several months haven’t been especially bloggable.

My immediate family is fine. But outside of that, all kinds of things have been blowing up. Most of those stories aren’t mine to share, but are close enough and big enough that they’re taking up considerable portions of my mental energy. If I have any useable thoughts, they’re buried beneath layers of debris from these various bombs.

Except this: I have shelter. Both a big-S Shelter in Jesus and a small-S shelter in my marriage.

The Lord is a firm foundation and He is unchangeable and sovereign over all the things and He loves the many people involved and is working for our good and His glory.

And within that, there’s the good gift of this marriage.

When I consider “home,” I instantly picture my bed. It’s monstrous and canopied and dark. I have a memory foam mattress in this bed frame that appears to be made for a waterbed, which means every time I change the sheets, I have to dig the enormous mattress out of the frame corner by corner to make the bed. It takes fifteen minutes and a fair bit of energy.

This bed doesn’t feel like home because it’s comfortable (though it is) or because of the unsharable fun that happens there (though it does). It’s the place we fairly consistently connect each night. Before we sleep, we have a habit of holding hands for just a minute and praying for each other, our family, and some situations. It’s this moment that makes bed “home” and makes our marriage a shelter.

We both have to go out and face the chaos pretty much every day, but we can always retreat to this space where it’s him and me and a good God who cares about us and about all the things.

If you are married and both you and your spouse love Jesus, can I recommend this? It took a lot of years for this to be habit, but it was worth the false starts and the hit-and-miss. It’s not the only way we connect with each other or with Jesus, but it’s consistent and it’s the most calming way to settle and remember Whose we are.

This is the space within the mess and chaos and death where I can see God bringing beauty. It reminds me that he’s making all things beautiful—even when things look like mess, chaos, and death.