This is our 6th story in our 8 part series, Loving Your Man When It Hurts! You can find all the stories here.
Contributing Writer: Melody Hester
We met in seventh grade at a church youth group outing. He held a can of coke over my head to which I tauntingly declared, “I dare you!” Annnnnd he did. And the rest is history. How that could be a turn on to a girl with sky high bangs that were suddenly plastered to the side of her head with syrupy coke I’m not sure. All I know is that I fell hard for this tall, dark and handsome preacher’s kid. After dating through high school and college we got married in 1993.
Life was good.
It was picture perfect. The hubs had a Master’s degree in serving God. Wait, I mean he had a Master’s degree in Pastoral Studies and we were serving God in a church plant. We loved our life. We loved God, and each other and we loved the people he called us to serve. The children weren’t there yet but we knew they’d come. After all, we were serving God.
Fast forward several years later and the picture perfect world started closing in. The dream of having biological children that we always longed for soon began to fade. My first exploratory surgery revealed severe endometriosis. The next two years involved two more surgeries, two failed IVF attempts and a miscarriage.
Not the plan we ever imagined for our happy little marriage.
God’s plan involved incredible heart ache and a wound that would take more than a few months to heal. Sometimes it felt like salt was being poured over it. Baby showers and Mother’s Day were glaring reminders that we were one of those couples with “infertility” hanging over their heads like a well worn banner.
Our faith was being exercised and we were getting to know God in new, deep ways but this was still really hard. And as we all know, it’s the really hard stuff that can drive us together or tear us apart as a married couple. I praise God that he sustained our relationship during this time and that we came out refined and better because of it. We didn’t do it all right but we look back and see how He was a voice behind us telling us which way to turn.
A few things to think about in relation to your marriage as you journey down a painful road:
Our husbands need to know that, outside of Christ, they are enough.
In my case, my husband needed to know that he was enough, even if we never had a child. I believed in my heart that Christ was all I needed and that my husband was a wonderful gift from God but my intense desire to have a child was so great that many times it was all I could think about. Sometimes I would forget to communicate to my man that his love for me and my love for him was enough. This didn’t lessen my desire for a baby but it let my husband know that he wasn’t second class to that desire.
Does your man know he’s enough for you?
When’s the last time you told him what you know in your heart?
Voicing it makes all the difference in the world.
Pray with your husband when life hurts
Prayer in the midst of pain is a discipline that will help bring you together. It is priceless and life changing. Where pain has caused division prayer fills in. When you ache so much that you don’t even know what to pray, still pray. We have One who intercedes on our behalf. This means when you don’t have a clue how to pray the Holy Spirit has you covered. Whew, right?
Hold on to the fact that God is working in the midst of your pain and if you choose to lean into him he can do amazing things through this season of hurt.
To read the other stories in this series go here.
~~~~~Melody is a stumbling Christ follower, wife to her pastor husband and Mom to the two precious children God brought into their family by way of adoption. When she’s not playing practical jokes, stealing tulips out of her neighbor’s yard or eating chocolate, you can find her blogging at Life is a Bowl of Wedgies blog.
images via flickr- Nina Matthews & Rustman
