A Wrecked Car and a Valuable Marriage Lesson

There is something special about your first car, especially if it was a car you could be proud of.

My first car was a 72 Plymouth Duster with a V-8 engine and a stick shift in the floor transmission. Sky blue with two flat black hood scoops and white racing stripes on each side. It was not the fastest car around but it sure was fun to drive. It was the only one around and anyone who knew me knew how much I loved it. The car seemed to be made for me. My car didn’t look as good as the one in this picture. But to me it was real close.

I was sixteen when my Mom bought me that car and I was still driving it a year later when Janet and I started dating. During the eighteen months we dated I even taught her how to drive it. She had always been afraid of straight drives.

9 Ways to Keep from Losing Hope

We all need hope. No one wants to live life without it. Anyone that has it, tries to hang onto it. Anyone that has lost it, wants to get it back.

When we want to do anything significant in our lives we have to have hope stirring in our hearts. That includes having a great marriage. And if we want our marriage to overcome all of life’s struggles, we have to have hope for what our marriage can be and hope for where our future will take us.

Hope is something we are naturally inclined to. We just have it without any effort to create it. It is formed out of our desire for something and our belief we can have it. It’s the image we carry in our hearts of what life should be and what life could be. Read more

Committed to a Covenant

Commitment in marriage is an absolute essential for a marriage to last. It’s the promise we make to each other, “until death do us part,” that gives us the hope of going the distance of being married for life. And when we are challenged with very difficult circumstances we find out how committed we really are. In Life decisions, I talked about my own hopes for a lifelong marriage and how commitment has seen me through some difficult times. All marriages start out with this vision of going the distance, of being married for life.

But, have you ever questioned the reason for saying wedding vows? Could it be that the vows themselves are indicators of what challenges a marriage will face? For better or for worse, in sickness or in health, for richer or poorer, are just some examples of what we have all said. We said these vows as a way of swearing our commitment to each other through whatever circumstances we would face. We swore our commitment in preparation for the tough times. No one ever swore their commitment for something that is easy, fun, and always enjoyable, there’s no need for it. But when we commit ourselves to something that promises to challenge our commitment, we swear a vow to ensure our commitment. Read more

Life Decisions

I made a decision. I was only thirteen years old, but it turned out to be one of the biggest decisions of my life. At the time I didn’t know how important the decision was. I didn’t know it was a “life decision,” but it was. I had made a decision that would set the course of my life. A “life decision” that would determine who I was and how I would live.

As I watch my mother lie in bed for two weeks overwhelmed with grief because her world had just fallen apart when my dad left, I knew right then when I married, my marriage would be for life. I knew I never wanted to hurt the way she was hurting and I knew I would never be the one to hurt someone else that way. Right then and there I made one of the most important decisions of my life, I made a “life decision.”

Jack’s Boots

It was my choice for him to leave and with reluctance, he agreed. Jack and I had done this many times before. We knew the routine; we knew how to break up. This was the fourth time and we knew it was final, no question in our minds. There was no slamming doors, no screaming, no ugly words, just a sad calm. And the occasional turning away from each other to gather ourselves as tears would run down our faces.

There was always a cloud of sadness to see him leave and we always cried together. I could never understand that. Many times we could not go through with it, so we would stay together. Although by this time the fighting had ceased and we were trying to rebuild, we found we were too wounded and numb to even know how to rebuild. We knew it was the end, it was over, he was tired and so was I.

We had been through nineteen years of fussing, arguing, fighting against one another and not understanding one another. Over the years we had beat each other emotionally so bad that the only hope for a bright future was to go in separate directions.