Missy’s Story. This could be your story too.
January 22, 2011 Leave a comment
It’s March 2003 and I’m standing in a church fellowship hall in Slidell, Louisiana, facing my husband of seventeen years. I am holding his familiar rugged hands in mine and feeling so blessed to have a man who would be willing to attend an event that will help to strengthen our, sometimes fragile, relationship.
I’m overwhelmed with love and adoration for this man who I have shared my life with and admired for more than half of my life. In my heart, I promise God I will do better at being a wife who is deserving of him, a wife who learns more about her husband’s preferred “Love Language” and “speak” it frequently.
I’m looking deeply into his hazel eyes in a way I haven’t for a VERY long time. Busy lives will do that to a person–a couple, because the truth is, he hasn’t looked into my eyes this way in a long time either. The daily duties and obligations of life can convince us that there’s no time for gazing into each other’s eyes and declaring our undying love for one another, but today we make time.
This day is special. We, along with our close couple friends, are attending a marriage seminar together. Dr. Gary Chapman’s talking head appears on the huge screen at the front of the building encouraging us to wholeheartedly recite the vows we are about to renew. He preaches that we should not take these words lightly, but to understand that this covenant (not a contract) we declare once again, is between the two of us and our God. Those holy, sacred vows that we first publicly declared when we were so incredibly young and crazy in love, are to be as sincere this day as they were then. He applauds our efforts to recommit ourselves to one another and to our Lord as he conducts this ceremony and guides us through the words we say, the promises we restate.
On this significant day I proudly hear Chris promise to love, cherish, honor, and protect me. I felt so safe and loved that day. I knew my husband meant what he had said to me, and it ushered in a wave of contentment to my soul that I had not felt in recent months concerning our marriage. Life was good!
Two months later I will find out that he is love with someone else’s wife.
Those beautiful promises that flowed from his mouth to my heart like a soothing balm had turned to gravel, and the weight of those seemingly little bitty rocks in my shattered heart ended up being the heaviest burden I’d ever have to bear.
About Missy Hunt
