Beauty on the Backroads

Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns

Marriage

The one thing I didn't expect to release

I began 2013 with a withered soul. The soil of my heart was dry and cracked and the weeds of disappointment and bitterness were choking the life out of me.

On the outside, I wasn’t much better.  My words were unkind and pessimistic, evidence of the slow hardening of a heart that had been dealt one too many blows. I was barely holding on.

My husband had graduated seminary six months earlier and was jobless in his field. We were raising two kids under the age of five, 800 miles from family, and we were not even getting by.

This wasn’t the life I’d imagined.

Mad at God. Disappointed with my husband. Embarrassed to be asking family for help.

And that’s where I was when I found OneWord365.

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Today I’m guest posting at the OneWord365 blog. Read the rest of my 2013 OneWord experience here.

When it's not the end: The story I never thought I'd tell

Today, I’m a guest writer at my friend Alison’s blog, concluding her months-long series Nothing So Broken. When she asked me back at the end of summer to participate, I wanted to say “yes,” even knowing that saying “yes” meant telling the story I never thought I’d tell.

It’s a love story, and like all good love stories, there’s plenty of conflict. But there’s also hope and grace and forgiveness.

It begins where most fairy tales end: with a wedding.

We stood at the altar, him and me, making promises, pledging our troth, nodding in agreement as our pastor and friend counseled us to lean not on our own understanding.

I was 29. It had been a decade of watching most of my friends get married and begin to have babies, wondering when it would be my turn. Ten
years earlier I had given my life to Christ, and I had expected him to find me a prince worthy of a happily ever after. I had waited what felt like a very
long time, but when I met Phil, I knew from the start something was happening.

Read the rest of the post here.