Looking Back, the View after 15 Years.

I spent yesterday at a pow wow with my family.  If you've never attended a pow wow, you should take the opportunity to do so sometime.  It's an interesting event to view. 

My husband and I met somewhere around 20 years ago in the pow wow world.  I was 16 and he was 15 when we fell head over heals deeply in love.  Or so I thought.  Who knows the heart of a teenager.  They are crazy.  But I do know that it is to this world of pow wows and friends that I owe my opportunity to meet the man who was to become my husband.  Okay, honestly it was to the great and awesome God who orchestrated the whole thing.  It amazes me that while I did not yet know Him, He was situating me for a future life so full of His blessings that I would be unable to deny Him, not that I want to.

I can pinpoint the exact moment I fell in love with my husband.  I remember exactly where we were and the circumstances surrounding it.  We were, surprise surprise, at a pow wow in Oklahoma.  It was a dance that years later we would attend together as a freshly engaged couple.  I remember that moment, sitting on that picnic table when I realized that I was in love with this kid. 

We were such kids.  Of course we wouldn't have believed that if you had told us that.  We knew so much.  We knew what we were going to be doing for the rest of our lives.  We couldn't imagine a life where one didn't pow wow 6+ times a year.  We loved our week long trips to Oklahoma, or our long weekend trips to Oklahoma.  We even spent our honeymoon at a pow wow.  Okay, not a pow wow, THE POW WOW.  The biggest and best pow wow in this area, the National Pow Wow.  This dance is held only once every 3 years.  It is this same dance that we attended yesterday, 15 years and 6 kids after our honeymoon.

God is so awesome.  I got to see a few old friends who I don't see much any more.  I got to share something I used to love with my kids.  I got to enjoy the music and dancing I often times miss.

Despite the fun I had, I got a much bigger message.  About 8 years ago, my husband and I walked away from this life.  The reasons are complicated.  We didn't know at the time how complete our removal from this world was going to be.  Where we once imagined ourselves raising our kids, we suddenly were no longer.  I don't think either of us intended to remove ourselves so fully from this lifestyle.  But it was several years before we returned with our kids to visit a life that had become so deeply ingrained in us.

Now, looking back, I can totally see God's hand and wisdom.  We cannot believe some of the things that we thought were so important.  We see danger and harm in things we once felt were so benign, even helpful.  Now we see the bigger picture with our children and understand that the things that are such vital values and beliefs to us would be practically impossible for us to teach well in this environment.  Not that others cannot.  I know many good people in the pow wow circuit who love their children and teach them well.  I am not criticizing them.  However, I know that my husband and I would not have been able to do so. 

God led us, without our knowledge or understanding, to walk away from that which would have been detrimental to our marriage and our children and led us toward a life far more fulfilling than we could ever have imagined. 

I still miss my old life sometimes.  I miss the fellowship, the late nights, the music, the dancing, the flashy clothes.  We now feel more able than before to take our children out to experience this occasionally without getting pulled into all that goes with it.

But yesterday I was given a gift.  God gave me the opportunity to fall more in love with Him, seeing much of what He has done without my understanding.  God also gave me the opportunity to fall more in love with my husband, the man God gave me to share this life with. 

I can truly say, as I watched my husband of 15 years dance around the arena carrying our 6th child in his arms, that I love him more now than I did during that National Pow Wow 1996, just days after marrying the man of my dreams.

On Guarding Your Heart

I grew up on country music. There is a certain quality to country music that has always spoken directly to my heart. As with anything, there is good and bad to listening to country music. It certainly didn't have the type of "profanity" and amoral content you might hear in some other styles (though I grant there is some). Yet I found, years later, one important way that it affected my heart, a way in which I was not expecting, nor was I ready for. Young girls especially, take heed, it isn't just music. You can be setting yourself up for problems without ever knowing it.

Here is my story. I am married to an amazing man. Now, after 15 years (nearly) of marriage and nearly 20 years together, I am loved and adored beyond my dreams. But this has not always been so. When my husband and I first married, we were happy. Of course, we didn't know any better, but we were happy. We bickered and argued, but who doesn't? We were in love. Of course, I knew what love was, I listened to all the great songs on love, country music. Country singers are the experts on love, or so it seems. I heard all the songs singing about how he couldn't live without her, she was the most beautiful creature in the world, he would walk to the ends of the Earth for her. And there begins my problem.

After 3 or 4 years of marriage, I didn't feel like I was being loved like this. Don't misunderstand. I married a faithful, kind, honest man who would never mistreat me or behave in any way that was less than ethical. Yet I was certain he was not as deeply in love with me as all these songs implied he should be. I wanted him to be gaga for me, but I didn't realize I had a part to play in this. I needed to behave in a lovable way.

I am not saying I was the worst wife in the world and he was miserable. Far from it. I was a mediocre wife, he was a mediocre husband, we had a mediocre kind of marriage (from my viewpoint). Once I became convicted that the only way I could make any changes in my marriage was to change my behavior, I saw real improvement quickly.

I began to try to treat my husband like he was the king (ok, that was my goal, I may have fallen short some). I wanted him to feel special and adored, the way I wanted to feel but didn't. I don't know how long it took, but 10 years later if feels like it was overnight that he began to reciprocate and began to see me differently.

Here I am, a decade later, more in love than the day we married. I truly know what it is like to be adored like the women in the country songs that I rarely listen to anymore. But I regret the years that I spent longing for what my heart misunderstood due to the influence of the music I listened to. I let my heart be affected to the point where, had God not intervened, my marriage would have been eaten away until we were no longer two mediocre spouses in a mediocre marriage, but two selfish people unable to make even a mediocre marriage work.

I am grateful God stepped in, showed me how to make my marriage what I longed for. I am grateful that God stepped in before I did lasting damage to my marriage and to the amazing man He gave me. Now as I am endeavoring to raise godly children, I think more about the influences in their lives, not just bad language or bad messages, but the heart of the matter.

I encourage all you young girls, or even married women who have issues in their marriages that are making them unhappy, search your heart for expectations that may not be from God. Ask Him to teach you to make your spouse (current or future) happy, not to show your spouse how to make you happy. Don't let "romantic" notions in your heart set you up for unrealistic expectations. Instead, let God's design for marriage, a relationship filled with servanthood and love, lead you to the best God has for you.