An Unlikely 23 Years

 Wedding Day- Sept.4, 1993
Connor’s birthday- April 1, 2003
During our first separation and pregnancy with Ryland- November 2004

Seeking a new start in Arizona all together- October 2005
 Second separation March 2010

Still together on a desert trail- Spring 2015

Today has been a tough day, emotionally.

Twenty three years ago today I made a vow before God and about 100 family and friends to take James as my husband, to have and to hold from that day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and health, till death do us part.

Those are some serious promises.  Better, worse, richer and poorer, sickness and health have all been part of these 23 years.  Honestly, most of it has been hard.  We weren’t a very likely match at 19 and 21.  He from the big city, me from a small town.  His dad a pharmacist, mine a log truck driver.  We met in a child development class, taking pre-reqs for nursing.  He hated it.  I loved it.  He had long hair and torn jeans and loved Journey.  I was on fire for Jesus after having decided to heed the call to follow him a year previous at 16.  He was raised as a Catholic, but more as tradition than devotion and by his teen years religion was not on his radar at all.  He had already been in a very serious relationship and at it’s end decided to move to Roseburg, Oregon from Phoenix, Arizona to take his dad up on his offer to pay for college as long as he lived at his house.  I had never had a true boyfriend.  I liked a couple of different boys, but that’s about as far as it went.  One guy from my youth group at church was really trying to win me, but I thought of him as a good friend and not a boyfriend or potential husband.  And then I met James.

We had a few conversations during the breaks at our evening child development class at Umpqua Community College.  He teased and asked me to share my chocolate cake and wondered what kind of music I liked.  I thought he was handsome and talked about my favorite Christian artists and invited him to church.  He came.  He met my family, played basketball with my dad and brother, went to the beach and camping with my friends while I worked as a C.N.A. at an Alzheimer’s facility, and on Easter Sunday he wrote me a love note.  I would say we started dating after that, but it really wasn’t dating.  In fact, I think we only went on maybe one or two “dates” before we were married.  Most of our time together was spent at either my house or his dad’s house, church or after work talks.

I was head over heels for James almost immediately after we became an official couple, but because of my convictions as a Christian, my relationship with him between April of ’92 and September of ’93 was stormy and full of indecision, conviction, guilt and desire.  I knew, after 8 months of hanging out with each other that we did not share the same desires in life, but the desire to be with him and the dream of being married and on my own and having my own family overtook my conviction that we were not heading the same direction in life.  Storming around my dreams, desires and convictions, the emotions of that time made it very hard to discern what I just wrote.  If you were to have asked me then how I felt about James and marrying him, I would have said I loved him and believed we would grow together.  I was naive to say the least.  On Christmas of 1992, the same year I graduated from high school, James proposed to me and I accepted.  On Labor Day of 1993 we were married at the church I grew up in.

In the past 23 years we both have come face to face with the reality that we want different things in life.  Through 2 separations and the birth of 2 sons we’re still married.  I’m sure that means something different to him than it means to me.

Over these 23 years I’ve learned that life is not about me, it’s not about my marriage, it’s about Christ.  The trials and fires of this unequally bound relationship have caused me to wrestle with God, ask hard questions, face hard answers and no answers, and come to grips with what I really believe.  I believe I can’t really know who I am, or why I am or what marriage is, or how relationships work best until I know God in Christ.  I believe marriage is his creation and has little to do with romance and anniversary presents and wedding rings and much to do with displaying how Christ has self-sacrificingly and faithfully loved his people.

I believe happiness in marriage ebbs and flows.  I believe in toughing it out when everyone says you shouldn’t stay in a marriage where you’re not happy.  Every married person is not happy with their partner at some point.  It’s inevitable. We’re human.

I met a couple at work the other day who have been married 59 years.  While talking with them about the significance of that, the wife said she didn’t believe it was good to stay married if you weren’t happy.  I was taken back.  Here was an 80 something year old woman who had endured 59 years with a real man (not a contrived romantic ideal as seen on t.v.) telling me a person who isn’t happy shouldn’t stay married.  In my surprise I asked, “I bet you’re glad you didn’t give up on this marriage when you weren’t happy somewhere in those 59 years or you wouldn’t be sharing with me the achievement of being married this long?”  She conceded and admitted there were unhappy times, but that they were too broke to afford a divorce then.  She was glad of that now.

We’ve looked divorce in the eye a couple of times in these 23 years,  I’d be lying if I didn’t say those eyes were alluring and I still catch a seductive glance from them now and then.  I can’t say with pride that I’m a woman of my word and I made a vow and I’m going to keep it.  Nor can I say that I am doing it for the kids or grinning and bearing it.  So what’s keeping us together?  I can’t speak for James, but for me, it’s love.  Real love.  The kind that is happy to make the beloved happy and hurts when the beloved hurts.  The kind that endures brokenness and offense and strives for forgiveness and reconciliation because it wants to be close to the beloved.  I wouldn’t know this kind of love were it not for Christ.  I’ve looked around and have seen a few other examples of “love” in the world.  None compare to the love of Christ.  And his love is in me.  And I love James.  It’s that love that binds that vow I made before God through every minute of every year with him like flesh and bone and vessels.  We were James Dougal and Sheila Deane.  And God made us one.  We are bound to each other through this life and it’s the love of Christ that binds.

With all that in my heart every day,  I woke up today and faced the hard reality of Sundays:  I love to gather with Christ’s local church and worship him together and receive his heralded word and my husband does not.  And, at this point, neither do my kids.  My oldest is more vocal and defiant about it right now.  My youngest goes cause he wants to be with mom.  This is a deep ache in my heart that spurns a constant pleading with God for salvation to come to this house.

So it was an emotional day.  My husband worked in the yard.  Connor metal detected for coins in the yard.  Ryland worked on a school project.   My eyes were heavy with hot tears all day and they spilled out a lot while I sang to Jesus at church and drove between errands alone.  I read a Psalm today that defines what I long for in this 23 year old unlikely marriage and precious family:

Oh magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together! -Psalm 34:11

Quieted,
Sheila

Love. Suffering. And the Heart-Stream Turner.

(Old pic, boys have grown a lot in a couple years.)

Here it is approaching midnight. I so wanted to sit down and write out some thoughts from today earlier but a neighbor popping in, a child wanting to play cards, a husband not feeling well and soap to be made stood in my way.

So, here I am, printing labels for soap at the very end of this 2nd Sunday in Advent and writing out some thoughts with this very tired brain.  Consider yourself forewarned.

Today’s reading was reflecting on love and today at church we heard from 1 Corinthians 6, not an apparent tie here, but there are these two questions:

Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded?

I remember having a Bible study with a lady once who seemed appalled at the thought that you should do something or refrain from doing something because it might cause that person to stumble in their walk with Christ.  I remember the look on her face that said, “That cannot mean that!  That’s co-dependency.  I can do whatever I want.”  I remember thinking she doesn’t get it.  She still thinks Christianity is something you add like a cherry to the top your personally selected sunday life.  She certainly doesn’t think Christianity is taking up your cross and following Jesus daily in dying to yourself and bearing with others, even suffering.

That section in 1 Corinthians that asks those two small questions… that’s the part that came to mind when I read this evening’s Advent reading on love.

Christ suffered wrong and was defrauded along the path to glorify the Father and bring me (and all those who would believe) back into a right relationship with God.

I will suffer wrong and be defrauded in this life as I set out to glorify my Father and point others to Christ.

That’s the price of love.  But oh is it worth it!

To the one who holds tightly to all they have to uphold their worth, suffering wrong and being defrauded is to be avoided and must be avenged at all cost.

But to the one who knows all things are theirs in Christ; who knows their worth and identity are found in him, to suffer wrong and be defrauded is a light and momentary affliction on the path of Christ-like love.

Being a Timothy-Mom to two boys in a divided house is hard.  It’s been really hard these last 48 hours.  But God amazes me how, “The king’s heart is like a stream of water in the hand of the LORD- he turns it wherever he will.” I worried.  And I took all those worries and cried and poured out my heart before the only One who can do anything about a 12 year old boy’s heart and his tired, unbelieving dad. And He turned that unbelieving heart toward wisdom.  And gave him the right words for his troubled son.  And I stood there in the hall and thanked God for hearing my cries and intervening.

I will trust Him!  There is no one like my God!

Quieted,
Sheila

Road trip day #1

Today after church we began our annual road trip to “Oregon”… We always say that but really it’s initially a road trip to Redding, CA where my sister lives. Eventually we get to Oregon.

In the past, I’d wake the kids early in the morning, load them in the car, and we make it closer to Sacramento before stopping for the night. But since we didn’t get on the road till about noon, after church, I decided to stop for the night in Thousand Oaks, CA.

I like Thousand Oaks. Everything grows here! Only the Santa Monica Mountains separate us from the Pacific Ocean. I wanted to go to the beach tonight but I’m just toast. Working night shift Friday night and then getting up early this morning has my body pretty fatigued. I plan to go to the beach either in the morning with the boys or on the way back home to AZ on Thursday.

I love road trips! There’s just something about the open road. I guess I like the feeling that I’m going somewhere. Sometimes life feels like you’re going nowhere. When you’re on the road, you’re going somewhere.

I’m glad I stayed for church this morning. I needed to get my compass pointed the right direction before I hit the road. It’s hard to hear the preacher preach on a subject that is a specific point of sin in your own life. As I listened today, I wondered if this is how folks feel when they hear a sermon on divorce after they’ve gone through one- or more- themselves. It’s hard, but it’s good.

I’m confident not a single person who’s gone through a divorce would hear a sermon on what God has joined together let no one separate and be opposed to what they heard. They, in fact, would probably be the first to stand up and say, “Amen!” They know the pain themselves. They know the damage. They know God hates divorce. They know… they hate it too. The same goes for the woman, who married an unbelieving man, who listens to the pastor preach from Ezra 9 and 2 Corinthians 6. Amen! The damage is extensive. There is no fellowship. The heart is drawn away from God, and then, when won back (if won back), is faced with the heartache of being separate in what God designed to be joined together.

During the sermon my oldest son looked over at me with a, “You’re busted,” look on his face. He knows. He grieves. He feels the ripping apart that comes with living with unequally yoked parents. Even though I hate it for my kids, I pray that the mercy and grace of my good God will use the pain they experience now to prevent them from going down the same path and cause them to love God’s ways, which are good. All the time.

We’ll talk about it tonight before we go to sleep.  Which is in about 30 minutes.  Time to sign off.

 Quieted,
Sheila