How to have an evergreen marriage, Part 3

Summer is the best season of all. I realize that those in the spring season might disagree, but there is something so beautiful about having gone through the seasons and finally reaching summer together. History is how our stories are created. History is what shapes us and gives us depth of understanding. Our history of making it through a tough winter or hard fall season reveals to us our strength of enduring and standing strong regardless of what was brought before us. In the summer season of marriage, we have learned how to communicate reliably with our words and with our micro-expressions that no one else will understand. Summer is when we feel secure and satisfied in our partner celebrating both their good and bad. We can even laugh at each other’s quirks and find joy in knowing and being known. 

There is one thing I have realized that I must do if I want to remain in the summer season. We must continuously be aware of what the Song of Solomon refers to as “taking care of the little foxes” (2:15). Foxes are known to wreak havoc to a garden if not dealt with. The little foxes in marriage are bad attitudes, moments of disrespect with tone, not thinking the best of our spouse in a situation, or not daily finding ways to celebrate them as a person in the mundane. The more aware we are of the little foxes and take care of them, we will better guard the length of our summer. I would also like to suggest that taking care of the little foxes will also prolong your spring or shorten your fall and winter season. 

After thirty-four years of marriage, Greg and I have gone through the seasons both rapidly and slowly. It was the choice to choose love and service that pulled us through. Recently, as we were going about our day, I realized that our highs and lows have made us more one because it is our story. Our story has not been easy, but it is ours. Our daily choices to be respectful or just be with each other in the pain of circumstances have made us stronger. 

Early in our marriage we heard that most couples go through a major life crisis within their first ten years of marriage. We laughed hard when we heard this because God took us through seven years of intense trials in our first years of marriage. Four of them were downright painful. One of the struggles we faced included being told we couldn’t have children. This devastated me. Greg reminded me that God will give us children if He wants us to have children. He was right. God blessed us after five years of praying and waiting. I always worry about sharing this one because I have dear friends that have not moved to the blessing yet. In our seventh year of marriage when Mikayla was a toddler and we were pregnant with Grant we lost everything to a flood caused by Tropical Storm Francis. Overnight, we became homeless with one child, pregnant with a second child, two dogs, and a cat. We had to face the daunting task of rebuilding our home while trying to find some semblance of familial rhythm. I remember walking into church the Sunday after our lives drastically changed thinking, “No one here knows what we have been through or how our lives have flipped upside down!” As God would have it, on that Sunday I was expected to stand up at church and give a testimony. Somehow by God’s grace I did, and I did it without crying or telling them what had happened to us. When I walked off the stage Beth Moore came up to me and said, “Do not stop speaking! You speak with authority! God has His hand on you!” She has no idea how I held onto that word of encouragement through the years or how much it meant to me on that particular Sunday of grief. 

When Grant was barely a toddler, we discovered my mom had a rare form of non nodgkins lymphoma that only eight people in the US had survived past five years. I wailed! Greg had to figure out how to handle me and my mom processing this form of grief. Oh my! My mom is now well over 20 years in remission and lives with us as we minister to her as she faces a lung disease and the loss of her husband of 48 years. Literally, at the same time we faced my mom’s battle with cancer, Greg’s company, ENRON, collapsed and we lost all of our financial security and savings. We was relocated to Nebraska from Texas, so we lost all of our family, friends, and church connections. This caused Greg to go into circumstantial depression. I felt like we were being hit from every angle in our lives. Leaving my mom behind in Texas was excruciating. I didn’t like her facing cancer without us. Starting over in Nebraska was so hard. I wondered if we would ever know the depth of fellowship we had in Texas. 

These very things that hit us hard in our seasons of marriage are the very things that God has used to make us resilient like the evergreen tree. We committed to making choices to love, honor, and obey the LORD and one another through it all. It was not easy, but the fruit born from it matured us and made us grow stronger. As I reflect, I am in awe of all God did in us. We really needed to mature in Christ, and this was the path He allowed us to walk. I am so thankful now for those years because God has used them in so many ways to allow us to love and serve others. So, now when we face a new season, we know we can keep growing through it all. He is faithful and we see to be faithful ourselves! 

Summer is when you have passed through the seasons and found you are content to be together as you weather the seasons because you know you are better together as you go through them than if you were alone!

How to have an evergreen marriage

When Greg and I walk through the park by our house, there is a blue spruce that was planted two years ago that we walk past. I love this blue spruce so much. The tips of its branches show its growth through a lighter green blue waxy color. It just captivates me. Recently, Pastor Phurba asked Greg and I to come lead a marriage conference for his church, New Life Bhutanese Nepali Church and as we walked by the tree as the sun was setting, I had the thought. “I love evergreens! They stay green all year long.” I think this is why I love them so much. I then had the thought, “What if we call the conference, How to have an evergreen marriage?” Just like evergreens, there are certain things we can do to help our marriages stay evergreen through the different seasons. 

I remembered that Dr. Gary Chapman taught a series on the four seasons of marriage. He wasn’t the first person I heard describe marriage in the four seasons, but it is the one I remembered. I will provide a basic summary of what I recall from his videos on YouTube and book. So, I decided to use his four seasons of marriage and the things I learned about evergreen trees and why they stay evergreen through the seasons to set up our conference.

Dr. Chapman starts his series of Seasons of Marriage with winter because he says that most couples show up in their winter season for counseling. But for our purposes, I want us to start with the season of spring because this is where most couples begin their relationship—SPRING! Oh, the season of spring is so glorious. You remember the wonder of it. It is filled with excitement and discovery as you begin to get to know each other. Your heart is open and full of optimism. Communication is so easy and flows without effort. Both of you delight in connectedness and communication. 

This season is often considered the honeymoon phase. It is so much fun to watch and yes, it is a little bit sickening to watch, too! Greg and I laugh all the time when we are with our daughter and son-in-love. They are young newlyweds and whenever we are together, they are so excited about their love that when we ask them a question, they will stare at each other as they answer and not even look at us. It is hilarious! Spring is simply glorious! I started here because I want couples to remember their story and the incredible glow of spring! 

The crazy cycle of marriage does not allow us to grow neatly through the seasons. They are not linear or orderly for that matter. We can be in the moment of spring and suddenly find ourselves in fall. Wait, what? How is it that spring moves so quickly to fall? What about summer? Well, with marriage it happens. It happens when we allow relationship drift to creep in. We stop communicating and we feel less connected. We might discover that we pursue things that fill our love tank, but not our spouses and suddenly we realize that we are both doing things, but they are not together. This is a critical time in our relationship because if we do not stop and find ways to connect, relate, and communicate deeper truths, we will find that our spouse can quickly become more like a stranger than our lover. We do not want to allow ourselves to drift too far into fall. If we do, we will find winter soon approaching with its cold isolation. 

The only reason I am able to write this out is because we as a couple know this reality so well. Early on in our marriage Greg would travel for training and I had to stay home with the kids. I really struggled in this season because I felt so alone and isolated in parenting. It was so hard for me to not be angry at Greg when he returned because I was envious of him traveling. The irony of it is that Greg didn’t like traveling. He was envious that I got to stay home and just be with the kids. We had to work hard to communicate and not fight during this season.