My marriage testimony starts with an angry teen vowing never to get married or have kids, and around 15 years later here I am blogging about marriage and raising kids.
Mr Bootcamp and I met in a bar when we were 16. We weren’t there to drink, although I took up drinking around then; just there for the music that night. We just ran into each other at the door and hung out for the night even though I was there with another guy friend that liked me. I sneakily got his number to text him a picture of the band and we have texted just about everyday since.
A few months of texting passed and I broke up with my boyfriend at the time and we started dating. It’s shameful that I was texting him continually while dating someone else, but this is my story. Do not follow this path! Actually, don’t even date until you can get married. Speaking of marriage …. What came next was extremely foolish.
First, let me tell you that we started our relationship on a good foot (besides me texting him while I was dating someone else). He had recently sworn off all dating because a bad relationship led him to a deeper relationship with God. He decided to make Jesus king of his life, follow Him daily, and have God at the forefront of all that he did. So his plan was this: when I texted he would only talk about Jesus.
*Redirect, redirect.*
He did very well! I was interested and asked lots of questions. I even tried doing a “read the Bible in a year” plan with him. It was really going well.
If you’ve read my salvation testimony (HERE) you remember that I got saved in middle school but was never fed the Word, like baby Christians need. So even just texting me scriptural answers for my questions was some water to my soul.
Well, it was going so well, that we just decided to get married as soon as possible. Mr had received some really bad advice online (due in part to not being plugged in to a healthy fellowship of believers to encourage one another in the battle of life).
“It’s better to get married than burn with lust.”
Yep, we prayed on the couch and headed to the bedroom.
Do. Not. Do. This.
Unless you’re the only two people on earth, it’s not real marriage for teens to pray on the couch, no matter how sincere your promise to really get hitched later on.
Now, since men are the leader of the relationship whether they know it or act on it purposely or not, you can guess what happened after this big mistake.
Things really went downhill. It breaks my heart to reflect on because I was starting to really come around to get serious in my faith, but him leading me into sin opened the door for my flesh to take it to the extreme.
I take full responsibility for my decisions and have brought them all to the foot of the cross. However, make no mistake that God has surely ordained men as the spiritual leaders of the marriage and family. When they do well, good things usually happen. When they lead in sin, it does not go well.
You have read in my testimony that I made many bad choices through the rest of school and shipped off to college. God really used this time of being away from each other to work in both of our lives to help us turn around our relationship to truly glorify Him.
While I was away at college, I only remember us fighting. I was still in the muck and mire of the world, only now with no parent to hold me back. On the contrary, Mr was spending more and more time with the Lord, getting plugged into fellowship, and making Christian friends.
I was kind of doing that, too.
I was living quite hypocritically, going to a church’s college ministry and partying during the week. The more time I spent with them, though, the less I wanted to be stuck in my sin. They were answering my questions with the Word like Mr Bootcamp had, only they were not living in sin like we were, so the Lord was blessing it.
One night, Mr listened to a Bible study and the Lord spoke to him as clear as day that we had to get our relationship on track or it was ending, or that I would possibly go with one of these other guys that was actually living for Jesus without compromise.
Scared is an understatement about how Mr was feeling.
He was literally shaking.
I was the boss of the relationship, so he was not used to telling me…anything. And I was never receptive. But the Lord showed him the way, and he really had no choice.
“Babe, We have to get married for real.”
Radio silence, then, “What.”
Well, by a miraculous work of God, I got it. It was a tense on the phone for a bit, but I conceded. There’s no way for me to describe it except the Holy Spirit moved my heart for me. I knew that was it. Honestly, we prayed and “got married” so I considered us stuck already, even though I had no idea how that was really going to all play out.
Now we had to repent of our sexual sin even though we hadn’t been within many miles of each other for a few months. Once we did that, everything changed. It’s the heart that God honors. We decided that when we were back in the same area we wouldn’t be alone together, even excluding holding hands. There were only a few hugs when I was having extremely hard days with my fresh walk with Jesus. We needed to be this extreme to wipe the slate clean because we knew exactly what we were missing.
It was SO worth it. He makes ALL things new!!
Mr soon traveled to where I was living and officially proposed. I lived there for a bit longer and really filled up with the Word, soaking in as much wisdom from my new church family as I could.
Then…. I moved back home less than 1 year after I left saying I’d never come back, and we got married in a church full of people, to the sound of worship music.
18 years old, baby Christian that I was. A little feminist from a broken family turned young bride in such a short time. It’s a transformation that only the God Who made the Universe could pull off. There’s no other way to explain it. The same extraordinary God that designed caterpillars to turn into mush and reform as a butterfly took this lump of clay and reshaped it completely.
Very few people thought it was a good idea, but the Christians that knew we were growing understood and supported us. We are forever thankful to those that poured into us instead of belittling us and marginalizing our experiences as we learned to follow God. It’s not a gift that everyone has…. to see what can be in people’s lives, instead of looking at where they have just come from. I was still brushing off the dirt of the world, but they loved me nonetheless.
How sweet for God to place me in such a loving and healing community when I needed it most.
There’s no way we would be where we are now, a decade later, if I had not gone off to college. They handed me a copy of Created to be His Helpmeet which gave me the foundation I never had. Mr Bootcamp couldn’t believe the change in me. We loved the excitement of being engaged and the adventure that was being poor newlyweds.
As newlyweds, we had a lot of cares in this world, but our Father in heaven reigned over them all, and we made a lot of sweet memories.
We possessed the most important two details in marriage: we were both COMMITTED and GROWING Christains.
God still had a lot of baggage to free us from, though.
Unfortunately, things did not stay rosy for very long.
Fast forward a few years, maybe 6 or so, and although I stayed home with the kids, we were evangelizing, living fully for Jesus, I said “I have to ask my husband” to everyone about everything…. There was a lot of fighting. A lot of staying up til 3 am beating dead horses. A lot of hurts and frustrations. Total dead bedroom.
We were both floundering and couldn’t figure out why.
The best we could come up with was that “I was submissive” and “he was the boss”, so we were totally stumped. We tried more books, sleep training the babies, going on dates, medical literature on sexual dysfunction, vacation, moving, and more.
Our young mariage had already endured in a few short years what many marriages don’t endure until decades in. (Many stories for many later days.) We never used the D-word. It was not an option. But we were not enjoying banging our heads against the wall trying to figure out what was going on!
We loved Jesus! We believed and lived Biblical roles.
What was not clicking???
The Lord was gracious to finally give us a breakthrough in the worst season of our lives yet. A season many times darker than you think you can imagine for yourself. In the depths of physical and spiritual agony, God breathed into us.
When we had nothing left, and *almost* cried out “Lord don’t you care if we die in this storm??!!”, he stood up and took over.
It seemed like the worst timing to deconstruct who we were as individuals and our whole marriage and rebuild it, but the Lord knows the best way. Through our pain we were able to finally release a lot of chains that had us tied down instead of walking in freedom.
A lot changed. Everything. We were both trudging through personal battles, so naturally, it was like a totally new marriage.
Mr learned:
All this growth in him allowed him to disciple me unlike ever before and help me let go of my own chains. MEN LEAD. WOMEN FOLLOW.
I learned:
Does it sound like a very intense list? It is. How could we not know these things were hiding in our hearts??
And we were GOOD Christians!
Sadly, these qualities are all too common, for many different reasons.
The crazy thing is that we had a bit of pride in our hearts thinking we had a really Biblical marriage because I deferred to him outwardly and he had the final say. We criticized loud, mouthy wives and lazy husbands behind closed doors. But, we were the same, just better at making it not seem like it on the outside to others. We said a lot of right things, but didn’t live it.
Praise be to God that He is the author and finisher of our faith (Hebrews 12:2) and the work He began in us He is FAITHFUL to COMPLETE! (Phil 1:6) If you have a willing heart and cry out to him, He will not leave His work unfinished.
You need two things: to be committed to Jesus and committed to growing.
Yet, growth hurts. Things have to die to make new life spring up. Chastening and discipline (literally, “learning”) are not comfortable at the moment (Hebrews 12:11) but in the end it brings forth good fruit if you are receptive.
Examine your own heart, don’t try to change your spouse. God is faithful. He can bring you into a glorious marriage without constant strife!
We haven’t had as many freedom years yet as we did struggle years. We’ll get there one day.
Now, we have fun again and have enjoyed the best years of our marriage yet. Mr Bootcamp has turned into superman and I’m his superwoman. We tackle the world TOGETHER now, to bring glory to God and grow His kingdom. We’re excited for the future with the new habits God taught us and the tools he gave us. We can’t express to Him how grateful we are because we didn’t even know what help we were asking for.
O give thanks unto the LORD, for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever.
Psalm 107:1-2