Weddings to Avoid

In all the wedding magazines you don’t see many articles on planning a wedding while dealing with morning sickness.  Or maternity wedding dress options.  Or articles how to explain to your parents that you’re pregnant and marrying your addicted boyfriend. 

Yes, chaos was like my best friend; these things were not part of the normal wedding checklist and I assure you. They were not on the checklist I had for my life either.  The next several months were hard and exciting all at once.  I was planning a wedding to marry my Brett!  I loved the idea of what I hoped was to come next.  I couldn’t help planning and dreaming for what surely must be coming; husband loving his wife, raising babies, buying a home, living happily ever after.  You know, the stuff we all dream of before marriage.  All the perfect stuff.  It had to be in there somewhere.

Only now, rather than wedding excitement, there was more doubt creeping in about what my married days and nights might look like.  Those thoughts I quickly banished. They weren’t fun thoughts to think about when planning my wedding and looking at my future.   I just needed to get married to get back to the original plan.  I put my head down and threw myself into planning.

My doubts would not be silent. Who could I tell?  No one would understand.  If I did share my fears about Brett’s behavior and addiction, they would tell me to end this relationship and maybe it was the right thing to do but I didn’t want to hear that.  Over the next two months of planning the wedding, I continued to doubt that this was the right thing to do.  But what choice did I have, being 3 months pregnant?  I did not want to be a single mom.  I wanted to be married, to make dinners for my hubby and welcome him home with a kiss each evening.  I wanted to have the dream; my dream.  Only, it didn’t seem like this life was going to fit into that dream anymore.  How could I get this plan to get back in line with my hopes and dreams of that fairytale life? 

Our wedding day finally arrived. It had rained early that morning and when we got to the church there was a beautiful rainbow in the sky.  I believed that was God blessing my wedding. Then I puked.  Morning sickness was brutal for me.  I had to eat about every 10 seconds to keep from hurling.  Add to that, nerves.  As we got ready my stomach finally settled but my mind didn’t.  Should I be here?  Is this the right thing?  Could God have another plan for me?  How would this ever work?  What would my marriage really look like?  Was I making a mistake to cover over the other mistakes?

In the midst of all of these chaotic thoughts, the hairdresser working her magic and the make-up artist beautifying me.  My amazing dress hanging in the corner of the room.  Oh, how I loved that dress!  It was the most beautiful thing I had ever worn.  I wanted to wear it everywhere!  It had been hard not to put it on over and over.  I wanted to wear that dress today.  I wanted God to fix this now!  I wanted Him to calm my mind, heal this mess I had made and fix my Brett so that he would stop using drugs and drinking so much.  I wanted him to make my life beautiful, not scary. My dad knocked at the door to tell me that everything was ready.  Guests were in place.  Brett and his crew were ready and waiting at the alter.  It was time to walk down the aisle.  As I stood outside the door of the sanctuary, ready to meet the crowd of our friends and family that had shown up to support us, I was hit square in the gut.  I didn’t have to walk down the aisle.  It would be ok. In fact, it would be good to turn right now and not make this commitment.  But then the doors opened.  No turning back now. 

My life with Brett would be great!  How could it be anything else?  He loved me and I loved him.  After all, isn’t that how all fairy tales start? True love against all odds…

This was the scene 25 years ago this month. Two immature young adults making a life long commitment to each other – both knowing it was a mistake and doing it anyway. Brett had the same doubts about me. I wasn’t an addict but we were always fighting and we had vastly different ideas of what married life would look like. We were building a ticking time bomb rather than a beautiful marriage.

Delusional comes to mind quite often thinking back over my decisions that led me to that point.  It’s clear seeing it from my vantage point today but back then, I thought I knew better, I was smarter than that.  I though with enough determination, it would all turn out fine. I liken this to the book of Hosea. Hosea is a story of Hosea and Gomer and scripture uses it as an illustration of God’s love for His people Israel.

Hosea was told to marry Gomer. She’s a woman living life as a prostitute. Apparently she struggled with married life and had affairs. She also took the gifts Hosea had given to her, to provide for her needs, and used them to make sacrifices to gods, most likely to ask for favor in these side areas of her life. She was living a delusional life. She behaved in a way that would create devastation in her life and asking for blessing. Like Gomer’s thinking, I thought my plan to marry Brett would all be perfect and would work just fine once married. 

Hosea 2:6-8 “Therefore I will block her path with thorn bushes; I will wall her in so that she cannot find her way. She will chase after her lovers but not catch them; she will look for them but not find them.  Then she will say, ‘I will go back to my husband as at first, for then I was better off than now.’  She has not acknowledged that I was the one who gave her the grain, the new wine and oil, who lavished on her the silver and gold—which they used for Baal.”

God allowed her to go make her decisions live her life how she wanted. He allowed her to have what she wanted. And, in the process, showed her that what she wanted was not providing for the needs she had. She was not going to find the answer to her problems that way. He let her look but not find love.  Reading through other parts of Hosea we see she found lovers but not love.  There is a big difference in that. What she was doing was filling her life with empty things. None of those lovers would satisfy. None would give her unconditional love she hoped for. God allowed her to experience isolation so that she could finally stop and listen, understand that what she had asked for and what she desired were not compatible.  In the midst she will desire to go back to Hosea.

Just like Gomer taking the provision she had been given and giving it on the alter of false hopes, I broke God’s heart when I took the promise of provision He had given and I gave it to the life I thought I could make.  The choice I made when I married Brett to find the safety, provision and love that God had already given me. I thought that if I married Brett my problems would get better and I would live happily ever after. I thought he would just magically want to get clean and live a life opposite of what he had been living. I thought I knew what I wanted and how to get it. God was gracious to me just like He was to Gomer. He brought me to a place where I could see how much damage I had caused in my life, marriage and family by choosing my own way. Separation, divorce, affair, brokenness in my family… Doing it my way caused many consequences. Some we still work through today but God has been faithful! Hosea is a book of God’s relentless love for His people. It reveals His desire to meet us even in the chaos of our own making and lead us to a place where healing can happen.

The key to healing isn’t getting all the pieces right and not making mistakes. Rather it’s coming to a place where we can see that when we lead with our desires, we walk ourselves into a mess. Healing comes only when we surrender the hurt, past, present and future, to the One who created us. The One who knows how to fix broken hearts and lives because He made us and knows the very best plans for us. It’s letting God lead us rather than forcing our way. I am thankful I can look back 25 years and reflect on this time. It’s beautiful to see what God can do when we surrender it all to Him.

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