The problem with being totally preoccupied with mommyhood is that (many of you) are married (smile). Some of you reading are not married any longer, others only looking at marriage with a glimmer of hope dancing in your eye…. We are all in different places, and that is ok. Even if you’re not married right this moment, would you keep reading? I want you to hear this too. It might be helpful later. I pray.

Do you remember waiting for your wedding day? Surely visions of the perfect white dress, beautifully decorated halls, and the groom of your dreams danced in your head (smile)? We anticipated that day. We waited expectantly. It came. We loved. Yet sometimes time threatens sacred things, threatens our memory. We the ones so chronically plagued with forgetfulness. The rush of life makes us forget things that should never be forgotten…

We got married and then 1 month, 2 years, 4 years in or more we had kids. Little to nothing eclipses such a miracle.

We were bound together in sweetness just before the circus began (BIG Smile). The circus that often tries to become our only preoccupation….

These bundles of joy all bound up around our feet, invading our space with their sweet presence are gifts from the Lord. There is no doubt that there is nothing we wouldn’t sacrifice for them. The Lord made us mothers, and it is a glorious thing. Sometimes though we forget that he made us wives first.

In the midst of diapers, tantrums, cute little milestones it is easy to lay something on the altar that the Lord would NEVER have us sacrifice, our marriage….

I haven’t the faintest  clue what makes me courageous enough to enter the grocery store with three children (smile), and then brave the self checkout line. Grace that an extremely kind young man helped me out to the van. I looked pretty ridiculous with three kids practically swinging like monkeys all about my person. They were being good, just being kids at the very same time, so I was pretty thankful for his help.

Chatting with him and shooting the breeze, I asked, as I often do, if he was attending church anywhere. He said he had only been in the area about 2 months and had plans to move back north as him & his wife of 6 years were not going to make it. They are getting a divorce.

In a moment like that when you expected someone to shoot the breeze back with the stuff of fluff you’re just floored and humbled. The expression of his face…the pain…the anguish…the “I wish (maybe I pray) my marriage would work out?” I don’t know if he knows Jesus, but I know Jesus loves him and hates this.

Some words, warnings just press on your soul until you speak; that’s why I’m writing to you…. We will definitely talk about marriage regularly. I love it! I am married after all, and delightfully so. Yet I understand that some of you are barely making it. With tears behind my eyes, some of you didn’t make it.

I am not pressing on your pain without compassion. I have witnessed marriages on the brink of every kind of imaginable disaster. I have seen miraculous redemption. In Jesus, there is always, always hope.

What I am saying to us young mommies humbly is this…GUARD YOUR MARRIAGE with everything Christ gave you! The enemy is after it, the culture will destroy it, your preoccupation with everything but….will hurt deeply your husband AND your children.

Life spins around no one but Christ.

And His order of things is always better than ours. He gives priority to family, but the relationship of husband and wife ranks above  for it is where the very picture of the Gospel is sketched in heavenly brilliance. The very first place your children have opportunity to see the Gospel with some skin on is in your marriage. If you want those sweet kiddos to love Jesus…learn to love your husband with utter happiness and joy; it will help! Oh, teach them the beauty of marriage and guard them from Hollywood’s version.

The pain of breaking marriages shadows the faces of so many, but it doesn’t have to. And that’s not naivete; that’s faith in the God who made the covenant. He binds it together. He makes it last. Even unbelievers cannot help but participate in something of the picture God sketched from time’s dawn…. Believers though we must go at this God’s way.

During Advent there is expectation. A waiting. A hope. A promise coming…. Maybe one of the best ways we can participate in Advent this Christmas season is to keep waiting on Jesus to come and work wonders in our marriages? He is always coming. He is always at work. He will show up as we wait. And for some, I know your wait is hard. Could I gently urge you to 1 Peter 3? Would you look there and see hope? For those like me whose marriages, though imperfect, contain a sweetness from the Lord, could we look to Christ again and be certain that all things in our home are in their right order?

 (Christ Jesus) He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

Colossians 1:15-17

As our days joyously fill with smiles, a thousand questions or more, shrill cries, tantrums galore, bursts of unbounded joy…as our feet are crowded and our hands incomprehensibly full…look up and SEE your husband’s face. The little years are not the time to forget him though it’s easiest too just then. That man you married, handsome he was, his face getting all lined by time. He needs your love and wonderment still. He knows he isn’t perfect, would you profess to be? Love him madly anyway and let your children see how love really does cover a multitude of sins….