A couple of years after my husband and I married, we had a terrible house fire that started from a box fan in our bedroom. It was devastating. I’ll never forget the helpless feeling of disbelief while watching from our street as smoke barreled from the windows of the first house we ever called home together.<\/p>\n
Justin and I had such a rocky start to our marriage. While most newlywed fights start over silly matters like him leaving his underwear on the floor or her burning dinner, our marriage started with us learning to manage a blended family, having our first child together, who battled severe medical issues, and all while Justin traveled several days each week for his job. As we tried to juggle it all, we both realized that, to make matters worse, each of us had brought a lot of prior baggage to our relationship. We had a lot of fights and struggled to understand one another back then. I remember having such naive hopes that only beautiful, perfect memories would be made in this home when we bought it, yet now, as I watched our house go up in flames, I worried this would be the point our marriage did, too. I hadn’t witnessed many healthy marriages in my life up to this point, and looking back, I know this probably shaped what I thought ours could withstand.<\/p>\n
As I watched the flames and smoke engulfing our home through the windows, I considered all the irreplaceable items that I’d never see again. I thought of honeymoon pictures, baby keepsakes, Christmas ornaments, and more, but at the very top of my list were the wedding vows I had written to my husband.<\/p>\n
Justin and I had written our own private vows to one another, and my sweet step-daughter, Taylor, had hand-delivered them to each of us just before the wedding began. It was a special moment I will always remember. Afterward, we had the vows framed and hung above our bed as a daily reminder of our commitment to one another. At the time, Justin was a bit more tech-savvy than I was. He had saved his vows on his laptop. But this was also back in 2011, and, unfortunately, I wasn’t up to date on technology yet and hadn’t saved mine anywhere.<\/p>\n
A couple of hours and several tears after they finally got the fire put out, a fireman came to walk us through what had been our home. The smell of soot was so strong that I had to ask a neighbor to take my son while we went inside. The mini blinds in every room melted down the windows and walls, and some of the windows had busted from the heat. Our clothes and things were tossed about everywhere and broken. Water, smoke, and fire had destroyed almost everything we owned. Everything in our bedroom was black, and the walls were still hot to the touch.<\/p>\n
I walked out of the house feeling such deep loss and defeat, but as I made my way back to my car, not knowing where to go or what to do, I heard a deep voice call out, “Excuse me, Ma’am!” It was one of the firemen calling to me from the house. He chased me to my car and said, “I saved this for you. I thought it might be something important.”<\/p>\n
Tears filled my eyes as he handed me a crinkled piece of paper. Dampened from the water with brown singe marks throughout. It was the wedding vows I had written to my husband. They had hung framed on the wall as our entire bedroom went up in flames. All things considered, they hung in there quite nicely. No longer were they spelled out on a crisp, white, perfectly pressed piece of paper in a big, beautifully framed encasement anymore. But the words were still there, and even legible. Over the next several years, those singed and tattered vows would begin to mean more to me than they ever had before, not because the words I wrote at age 25 were so profound. Reading them now, I see them as quite naive and immature to tell you the truth, but they were a promise I made to my husband to stay the course, no matter what we ever came up against. Looking back today, that blemished piece of paper probably symbolizes our marriage better than it ever could have in all its perfection because together, my husband and I had been through hell and back. But with Jesus, we got through it together, and while we might have been a little banged up from the process, we were holding on and staying the course.<\/p>\n
Perhaps you are reading this and considering your own marriage, but there is another token in the story, too. I can’t help but consider my salvation and the day I accepted Jesus as my Savior. Just as I made my husband that promise to stay the course, God makes a promise to those who believe in him, sealing their lives for eternity. A lot of us, whether it’s in our marriage or our own individual hearts, might struggle to believe God hasn’t disappeared on us because our lives don’t look like a crisp white sheet of paper anymore. Life scars us. Sin darkens us. Hurt burns us. And we can be left wondering if too much damage has been done. But I want you to know that with God, all things are possible. He can take what’s broken and make it beautiful. Because often, it’s after those blemishes, cracks, and imperfections appear that we find the strength we needed through him all along.<\/p>\n
My husband and I have now been married for going on 17 years, and words can’t express how happy we are that we stayed the course. Out of sheer desperation, we began studying the Bible together and praying together, and it led us to grow in ways we never had before. Eventually, this caused us to do something that changed our marriage entirely. We began to see one another through the eyes of Jesus. We learned to give each other grace, we let go of resentment, and we stopped getting angry with one another for being flawed, broken, or damaged, and instead, we began to look at one another and our marriage as a symbol of God’s power and love for us. Today, I stand in amazement as I consider how the smoke and flames of this life brought us closer to one another and to Jesus.<\/p>\n
Friend, I don’t know if you kept reading this for your marriage, or your own heart, but I know God has a plan and purpose for you. Instead of focusing on what’s broken, grasp onto him, and he will reveal the beauty that only comes from the broken.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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