A Word From Stephanie

I find I don’t like beginning essays/blogs/whatever you’d like to call them because I feel some need to say something clever. I am not clever, so I am going to skip over this part.

God's plan for marriage is incredible to me. Initially I married Jason because he was hot, wonderful, and I loved him. Now I realize, God had a plan all along to use marriage to shape me into the likeness of Him. Never in my life have I been so completely forced to face my insecurities, my fears, my past hurts, my present assumptions. Every time I find a new stumbling block to my marriage, I am amazed to find I have the same stumbling block in my relationship with God. You’d think I’d get over being amazed! Presently, God is in the business of addressing the guilt and fear that to some extent has plagued me for as long as I can remember. From a young age, every time my parents called my name fear would sweep over me as I thought (falsely about 90% of the time) that I was in trouble, that they were angry or disappointed with me. Now as an adult I am doing the same thing to my husband. I have also done the same thing to God, constantly expecting Him to be mad at me, then having to be reassured of His love. I realize now that guilt, the feeling of failure, or not meeting up to expectations, has been a constant theme in my life, and to avoid these feelings I have avoided responsibilities, relationships, and commitment. The main fallacy in all this however, is that I have the ability to be anything good on my own strength. In Psalms 16:2 David cries “I said to the Lord, “You are my Lord, I have no good besides you.” This verse has always spoken to me, yet I have failed to see how true it really is. By the very presence of guilt, I have admitted that I am relying on my own good to get me through the day. In reality, as Jesus has been constantly reminding me over the last few weeks, we have NO good outside of Him. When I fail, when I am less than I ought to be, I do not need to struggle. Instead I need to pray for the Holy Spirit to change me, to guide me. God wants to change us from the inside out, but He can’t do that very well when I am constantly having the ME that’s trying to change me getting in the way. Instead I need to pray for Christ in me, and to rest in His spirit. God is not waiting for me to get my act together and read the Bible every day. He is not waiting for me to be a good wife and do the laundry every day. He is waiting me to give it all up, to rely on Him, and realize that I have nothing to fear, nothing to dread, because it is Him IN me that is going to do the work. He has taken all guilt, taken it upon Himself on the cross. Now, I need to move forward in faith, in joy, in prayer. There is freedom in knowing we have no good outside of Christ. Stephanie, summer 2010