If life goes in waves, mine are rolling in faster and higher. In fact, I’m a bit seasick.
Weren’t we just children whom someone else worried about? Then college students, totally independent except for our parents’ money? Fast forward to marriage, careers, and kids of our own to worry about.
Weddings now fill the horizon as friends of our 20-something kids begin echoing “I do’s.”
My husband and I drove to Augusta this year to attend the wedding of the daughter of dear friends. It’s where we began life as newlyweds more than three decades ago. I couldn’t stop humming “Sunrise, sunset, swiftly flow the years.” He couldn’t stop rolling his eyes.
I flashed back to three young couples who met in Augusta: the parents of the bride, my husband and me, and one other couple. We connected as the rebels who didn’t follow the Young Marrieds Sunday School script. We played hooky from the potlucks, stayed up late playing “Nertz,” and dug deep into each other’s lives and struggles. Within three years, we all dispersed: the bride’s parents moved to Israel to run a youth hostel, the other couple transferred “up North” and began to populate the earth with boys, and we lived in Michigan and Montana before coming back to the South. Those two couples rooted back in Augusta, and we settled in Birmingham. But before our small group broke up, we left each other with a promise that turned out to be profound. We decided to simply pray for each others’ marriages. Looking back, there’s no better advice I could give these young wedding-bound women.
I was asked to speak to Elizabeth and her bridesmaids at their pre-wedding brunch. As I began, I saw the same look in these girls’ eyes that I had 30+ years earlier. A naïve determination that they’d be different, they’d get it right, because they’re more energetic, more creative, more in love.
Take notes, girls, and save it for later.
Just Give Me the Marital Navigation App
The thing that most about-to-marry girls want to hear is how to prevent the mistakes their parents and everyone else in the world have made. They want to download the GPS app to help navigate the hard times and ride the breakers back to calm waters.
But unpredicted storms will come.
People abandon ship.
Boats sink—or get dry-docked.
So I asked these young women three questions:
What anchors will help you survive the storms that come to all marriages?
What sails will keep you on course into God’s deep, wild Kingdom and away from the shallows?
What’s in your life raft? Because, at some point, almost everyone lands in a dinghy bailing out doubt while trying not to drown in grief.
Anchors
The storms of suffering pulled hard at our anchors. Looking back to the times when we were tempted to cut free out of fear, we realize the line held not because of our “clinging” skill but because Christ held us. Deep relationships and prayer also anchored us.
Deep Relationships
We’ve latched onto a few decades-long friendships in our uprooted life. These are the couples with whom we made memories, laughed, prayed, wept, and stayed up really late (that last one while we were still young). We figure ways to stay in touch (beyond Christmas cards) and ask the good/hard questions no one else has permission to ask. We also had the gift of older “weathered” couples who shared honestly how they navigated their own marital waters.
Prayer
Hurricane-force winds of real life blew away any illusions of control we had. At those times, prayer—not rote repetition but gut-vulnerable pleading—anchored us to God’s grace, each other, and our praying friends. I often wonder how the “let’s just pray for each other’s marriages” prayers of these two other couples kept us from sinking.
Sails
The bridal bunch I spoke to are brave, world adventurers with sails set high. Most marriages start out like that, focused on the far horizon, but end up with a mortgage, 2.5 kids, three pets, soccer practices, and multiplying obligations. Couples stare at the stars and ask:
How did we get here? How did our children’s happiness become our biggest goal? When did our 401K begin to matter more than the Wild Kingdom? Will we have anything to dream (or even talk) about when the kids leave port?
It’s been a lifelong struggle for us to stay focused on the far shore. As my husband and I thought about what kept us steering out of the shallows, we thought of community, humility, and humor.
Community
We plugged into a healthy church. Christian community kept us out of the shallows of self-focused spiritual actualization, tied us to Scripture, and continually refocused us on our destiny and destination.
Humility
We learned to never, never, never say never. As soon as we rolled our eyes and judged others, we too ended up with a used minivan. We too got sucked into some get-rich-quick and get-out-slow scheme. We too made each go-sleep-on-the-sofa mad.
Humor
I’m thankful that we can laugh at ourselves (gently and together), the screwed-up world we live in, and at past painful situations which we chose to reinterpret with more lightness. Unfortunately, we’ve gotten so good at it we have been known to laugh uncontrollably in inappropriate places, like weddings and funerals.
Life Raft
At some point, most marriages land in a life boat (perhaps bankruptcy, betrayal, disease, death, infertility, mental illness, children stress, trauma, prison, etc.). We’ve been in that tiny raft before. The waves of grief, doubt, and shame loomed large.
There are no formulas, quick fixes, anchors, or sails in a life raft—just hanging on.
We tossed overboard all unnecessary ballast (including most of the advice I gave above).
We clung to the truth that God loves us (even though it didn’t feel that way).
We focused on the resurrected Jesus Christ as our lifeline leading to Heaven.
We repeated the truth to each other that we will see the shoreline and arrive safely home, no matter if in this world or the next.
As I finished speaking, I looked over at my two friends nodding in agreement (especially the laughing at funerals part). These were the ones who had faithfully prayed for our marriage and a big part of why I was standing here spouting these truths. So, if there was one piece of advice I’d give Elizabeth? Find those kind of friends.
I left the girls with Sir Francis Drake’s prayer, which may be more suitable to us parents, but they can tuck it away for later—because in a few “waves” they’ll be there, too.
Disturb us, Lord, when
We are too well pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we have dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.
Disturb us, Lord, when
With the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.
Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wider seas
Where storms will show your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.
We ask You to push back
The horizons of our hopes;
And to push into the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love.
This we ask in the name of our Captain,
Who is Jesus Christ.
Sir Francis Drake, 1577
All photos by Bill Carroll
Nancy W. Carroll is a writer, speaker/teacher, and "soul-tender" from Birmingham, AL who blogs at Really Late Bloomer. She serves as president of InSpero, Inc., a 501c3 believing in the power of creative community to bring hope and healing to our city and churches.