Facing the Issue: Marriage

Debbie's Story

I was supposed to be praying. I was at university and had gone along to a prayer meeting with other Halls of Residence Christian Fellowships. I spotted him on the other side of the room wearing a distinctive yellow sweatshirt. "Umm" I thought, "Is this the one?"

About six months before this I had split up with my boyfriend of four years, mainly because he wasn't a Christian and therefore his life was based on a different set of principles to mine - he had different priorities. I believed that God had someone different for me, someone who would share my faith. When this young man came over to me and asked me to pray with him, I was overjoyed. I didn't even get his name - but I attended all other Christian events that week in the hope of bumping into him again!!!

Soon we were going out together. It was great to be in a relationship where we could pray together. He shared my Christian values. It wasn't always wonderful. We had our ups and downs. On one such down we had a row, being a volatile sort of person, I stormed off. I can clearly remember calling out to God in anger and frustration "Is he the one, the one you want for me?" I felt the answer very clearly to be "Yes, this is the one I want you to be with." Then why, I asked, was it so difficult at times? Why did this relationship seem hard work?

We continued going out, going to church together and praying ... but the praying got harder to do. We had known from very early on that we had wanted to marry each other, but we were both at university and decided to wait until we had both finished our courses before getting married. After 2 and a half years of dating we got engaged. Phil, my boyfriend, began a job in Somerset and when I finished university six months later, I got a job there too. We found a church where we wanted to settle and made friends there really quickly. We bought our first house, although I lodged with some new friends we had made, until we were married.

We got married in 1990 and after a wonderful honeymoon, moved in together and began married life. It was pretty good most of the time. Friends were always round. We became involved in the church, running the youth club. Praying together was tricky still and didn't come naturally. Arguments were a regular part of our life. We are both quick tempered and neither of us likes to back down.

After a few years Phil was working and living away from home for most of the week. This led to our first major crisis. He could live a single life when he was away and I was at home on my own. We rowed nearly every time he came home. We both felt undervalued. Deep down I knew I had married the right man in God's eyes, but I felt undervalued. I felt Phil didn't need me so much. I was insecure but didn't make much effort to make him feel valued when he came home. When the crisis came, we decided to move to a different town, halfway between both of our work places so we could come home every night to be together. We were sad to leave our church and friends but we didn't want to separate. We meant our wedding vows and weren't going to walk away from this relationship at the first hurdle.

The move worked. We spent more time together but we missed our church and our friends . We found a new church, but it wasn't the same. After about 9 months, with a much surer marriage we returned to our old town, with me 8 weeks pregnant. Phil managed to alter his work pattern so that he did some of his work from home and didn't have to stay away at all.

Over the next two years, we had two children, a girl and then a boy. I returned to work part-time and we enjoyed family life.

A week after the birth of our second child, Phil began a 3-day a week 4-year course an hour and a half's drive away. The stress we were both under increased even more when 3 months later, Phil bought a new business and worked there for the rest of the week and 3 evenings a week. We were both under a lot of pressure; we began to work at our relationship less and less and to pray less and less. As the children got a little older however we could see light at the end of the tunnel. Life would get a little easier maybe. We thought about holidays we could take and the things we could do now that we were moving out of the "baby stage".

It was a big shock when we discovered I was pregnant again. We were not impressed - our life was stressful enough without any more pressure. However, I quickly moved on from these thoughts and decided that hey, this was not what we had planned … but it must be God's will and I believed God had a reason for this. My husband didn't find this quite so easy to accept - he was working for some very important exams and was incredibly busy, running his business and studying.

The next shock to the system was when I got made redundant. I enjoyed my job and thought I had life sussed. I was good at my job and got a lot of satisfaction from it. I had been doing it for 10 years. I always spent 5 days a week with the children and felt I was a good mum. I felt a bit superior to the mums who didn't work. I had the best of both worlds. But my job-share partner was leaving and they couldn't replace her. I didn't want to work full time, so I took my maternity leave and then had no job to which I could return. Although in my head I knew it was for the best and was God's will, I felt rejected and I had to think a lot about who I was and where my identity came from. As a Christian, my identity should have been in God. Who am I? God's child. I realised I saw myself as a successful teacher, wife, mother etc. and had been pushing God out.

We found it very hard to pray together and so we didn't pray. My husband was so busy with his businesses (he had more than one by now) and his course, that he was finding his faith less important and had phases when he didn't go to church and didn't pray much. I wanted him to be a stronger Christian.

Our third child was born - a lovely girl. We loved her to bits and got on with life - but life was very hard. Three small children under 5 years are hard work. I didn't have anytime to myself. My husband and I drifted apart and rowed more and more. I think he felt I didn't care for him enough and I felt unloved and not valued by him. We both got on with our own lives, him with the business and me at home with the children. Both of us felt the other didn't value the contribution that we made to the family and the rows became more and more frequent.

We had an almighty row the night before I was going to an annual Christian camp I lead. Phil said he didn't love me and I stormed off (I was good at storming off) to a friend's house in tears late at night. After praying I returned home. Phil and I didn't know what to do. We did mean our wedding vows to be for life. We did believe that when we had got married God had somehow joined us together but we now both hurt so badly and didn't seem to be able to help each other at all. The marriage didn't seem to be working for either of us. Surely God didn't want it to be like this? Surely God wanted us to be happy?

During this time I realised one thing, which was key to me getting through this. I was trying to do everything in my own strength and not trusting in God to help me. Life had never been hard. Nothing awful had happened to me. School and work had never been a problem. I was living my life in my own strength. As a Christian, I should have been living my life in God's strength, doing His will and not my own. I felt I could run my own life. I had been trying to make my marriage better by myself. Now I found myself in a situation I couldn't sort out on my own. I had to rely on God. My husband was considering leaving.

I went away to camp unable to rely on my strength. I was exhausted. I had to rely on God's strength. I also couldn't do anything to "sort the marriage out" as my husband was not with me. The only thing I could do was to pray for him and for our marriage.

When I returned, my husband had decided to go for counselling. He didn't know if he wanted to leave our marriage but he wasn't just going to walk away. I couldn't help him sort this out. I wanted to stay married. I didn't believe it was God's will for us to separate. I knew I loved Phil and that underlying feeling that he was the man God wanted to be my husband stayed with me, even though it didn't make sense. A verse from the Bible was important to me throughout all this time: "For I know the plans I have for you," says the Lord. "They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope." (The Bible, Jeremiah chapter 29 verse 11).

Not many people knew about our problems. We had 3 lovely children and were comparatively well off. To an outsider everything seemed good. A few close and wise Christian friends knew what was going on and their prayers and support helped me through this period tremendously. They prayed for me when I was too upset to pray and supported me when I'd had enough.

Eventually, we decided to go to Relate (relationship counselling organisation) to get counselling, to help us make the decision whether to separate or not.
The counselling wasn't what I had expected. It was enjoyable at times. We had to learn to talk and communicate properly as there was a counsellor there ensuring we didn't row. Until we went to Relate I had blamed all the problems on Phil. He was the problem not me. My prayers would be for God to change him. Whilst going to Relate, I had to accept that some of the blame lay with me. I had to change too. Relate is not a Christian organisation, but God used the counselling we received there to help turn our marriage around. I began to realise that God wouldn't change my husband because I wanted him to change him, but God would help me change if I asked him to.

Our relationship improved no end. We were together because we wanted to be together. We had weathered the worst of the storm. Phil became more involved with the children. He finished his 4-year course and worked less. We had more money. However whilst my husband began coming to church again, his faith didn't seem to grow. I wanted us to have a relationship where our faith was shared, where we both could worship and pray to God together. We were still together but I wanted our relationship to be based on a shared faith.

Three more years went by. We had good times and bad times. Now I didn't storm out if we had an argument. We argued much less. We were there for each other more. We were both very glad we hadn't given up on our marriage.

Last summer we were going to a wedding, and my husband was to meet me at the reception as he was working during the day. We were then to have a couple of nights away without the children. I was travelling to the wedding thinking and praying about our own marriage. Again I spoke to God about how I wanted our marriage to be more based on a Christian commitment from both of us. I realised again that I was once more living in my own strength. I asked God to forgive me for that and to help me be different - to love Phil for who he is, and to put him before me. I asked God to take control of our relationship. I wanted Him to be in control.

Then, later that day, when Phil had met up with me and we were in our hotel, out of the blue, he told me he felt we needed to get up early daily to pray together. I thought God would never get around to answering my prayer. I was shocked but delighted.

After our wonderful days away, we did begin to get up earlier and are still praying together daily, 6 months later. His faith has blossomed and he is now very much the spiritual head of the family. He is leading a Bible study group, and I believe God is changing us both so fast.

After 12 years of marriage, I can see that God is using our relationship to make us more like Christ. I feel sure that Phil is the man God wanted me to marry. It's not all plain sailing, we have a long way to go but now I know that God is the centre of the relationship and with that knowledge we can face the future together. I can see that God's "plans for good and not disaster" involve me being married to Phil. I am glad we did not walk away from the marriage when for a time that seemed the easiest thing to do.