Marriage Stories – Down To The Studs, A Guest Post by Brianna George

Marriage can be both ridiculously wonderful and ridiculously hard. My husband and I will be married for 27 years this month. Our oldest daughter and her husband also got married in November and just celebrated their 2nd anniversary. I have asked a few friends to share their hearts with us during the month of November on the topic of marriage. I’m so honored that they have agreed to empty their hearts so our hearts can be filled. I pray my friend, Brianna George’s, words flow straight from her heart to yours. This post was originally shared on her beautiful site, Unveiled and Revealed. Be sure to go read more of her heart there.

Sometimes in our great world of knowledge and experience the Lord brings us back to the relearning and refocusing of His foundational truths. To a place where we are stripped to our studs so our foundation that may have some hairline cracks and chips can be restored, giving us stronger walls and beams to experience even more of God’s goodness. Sometimes we go through a season of intense refocus, intense relearning. And we Praise God for these times, despite them sometimes being painful. For they are the seasons of hope. Seasons of His tangible grace. He reminds us during this time of our wholeness in Him. We experience His relentless pursuit to be in every one of our thoughts. He displays for us all he accomplished.Praise God for the hard seasons. It’s in these seasons we are reminded to be small. To be last. To be the servant. We are reminded that we are still on a journey that has not yet arrived at it’s destination. We are shown just how BIG our God is.

Marriage is hard y’all. This past week Jason and I had an argument. It was one that had been bubbling for awhile through this difficult season we find ourselves in. Words were said yelled. Accusations made. Feelings projected. It was ugly. In fact as I write this post it hasn’t even yet been fully resolved…days later we’re both still a little raw.  During the last 5 months we BOTH have been stripped bare to the studs. Our comforting insulation of false pride, expectations, rejection, and insecurities brought to the surface to be ripped out. These untruths these toxic issues that have been demeaning our spirits have been surfaced to be replaced with Truths of Real Love. Real Opportunity. Real Friendship. Real Fatherhood. Through this process we have somehow neglected to recognize this about one another. We have been so focused on our own pain, our own needs, our own deconstruction that we have been distracted from fully seeing one another. But our foundations are being restored, separately, yet simultaneously. It’s making things complicated. It’s glorious. It’s hard. I hate it. I love it.

Jason and I have all the tools for a healthy and intimate marriage. During our almost 12 years of marriage we’ve been to many marriage workshops, retreats, we’ve even taught marriage tools in ministry, heck we even sit on the board for World Wide Marriage Encounter, yet still…we mess up. We get distracted. We forget. We become too big, instead of small…even with each other. We allow distractions to blurry our vision of one another. Distractions to blurry our vision of Christ. We think we KNOW IT ALL. But Grace. Grace heals the broken places of our marriage. It’s a healing balm for every hairline crack that pressure has put on our foundation. Grace puts Christ back as our vision. He is our greatest vision that distracts us from all of life’s other distractions. He is enough…even when we mess up. Even when we’re wrong.

He leads us to the place we need to be to be restored. To fill all the cracks in our theology. To renew our minds of His love. To distract us from our circumstance. To let us see the path, the work, the place he has for us to be today. I don’t know how or why it works this way, but it does. When we listen for His gentle leading voice…His voice that puts us in the place to minister to others. To share…to be real…to be small…to admit we just don’t know.

What if we admitted we don’t know everything? That we aren’t sure of all the answers. That perhaps we may even be wrong about some aspects of our theology. What if we not just said these things but lived them…Not in a false humility sense, but in a real, transparent, and vulnerable way. Would our confidence in God change? Would we feel less than? Unworthy? Identity lost?  If the answer is yes we may be chasing the wrong god…maybe instead we will realize that we maybe have been chasing man’s approval, not Christ. Reputation is murdered when we look for approval from any source, but Christ.

Me? I’m a chief recovering know-it-all. The principal of mended people-pleasers. The foremost convalescent of worriers-of-reputation and standing. But for grace…but for rest…Christ goes before me and makes way my path showing me more now than I ever could know in my lifetime. We can trust that whatever God does, it is right. He is always good. His righteousness will only allow Him to do what is right. His love only allows Him to do what is loving, even when to us it feels like suffering. His omniscience sees so much further down the road and His concern is so much more for the shape of our souls and deep down healing of the toxic untruths than for our comforts…which sometimes to us even feel like basic needs. He works for our hearts. He panders for us to live in a way that is REALLY following Jesus because it is as crucial, if not moreso to us, as the idea of following, especially when life doesn’t get easier before it gets harder. God will never love us more or less than He does right now. “He is faithful because He cannot deny Himself.” 2 Tim 2:13

He takes us to our studs and He reminds us of our wholeness in Him. We experience His relentless pursuit to be in every one of our thoughts. He displays for us all he accomplished.

He can show me more today than I could ever know in my lifetime…

Because today I know nothing but the love of Christ. And that is enough.

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