I recently needed to make a ministry/training trip to southern Virginia. It was a lovely drive; one in which I have made many, many times before. You see, our marriage began in that area 44 years previously. That now seems like a long time ago.
I experienced a very pleasant surprise on this trip. I exited early off of Interstate 64 onto J Clyde Morris Boulevard. We lived in a small, two-bedroom apartment off of that street. I wanted to see if 59 Traverse Road, apartment 3 still existed.
To my surprise, it did exist! I pulled in as I had done many times in the 1970’s and found the very apartment we occupied, the very space we parked our car and memories began to flood my mind. I could see us sitting on those front steps talking to neighbors, handing out Mary’s homemade donuts or whatever recent baked good she created and our neighbors loved. I could see us cooking on our Hibachi grill out back and running into one another in that tiny kitchen. The buildings looked good, well-kept and so familiar. Even the door was painted the same color.
I saw something else as well. I remembered that this is where we learned to cook together, where we found and grew in intimacy, where we first made a habit of praying together as a married couple. This was where we would depart from every Saturday to do outreach into the rougher areas of town looking for children who wanted to ride our huge, ex school bus to Sunday School, creating our first mission together as a couple. This apartment was foundational to who we were and to where we lived because God placed us there. How do I know that?
Acts 17 states this, “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth…from one man he made every nation of men that they should inhabit the whole earth and the exact places where they should live.”
That exact place was our place in this world and we loved it. We loved our neighbors, our community, our jobs and our local church. We fell in love with marriage itself and simply could not get enough of one another. It was all a dream come true.
I then snapped a quick a photo to share with my bride. We don’t live there anymore, we’re older, we’re wiser, we have less energy, but we still love one another deeply along with our neighbors, our community, our jobs, our church and our mission together. Looking back is necessary. Realizing the long marriage commitment and trek we have been on is amazing to think about. But you know what else is amazing? Looking forward, growing more in love, still praying and maintaining the mission that our heavenly Father has given us.
Thank you 59 Traverse Road, apartment 3 for all the memories. We have moved on from you and have a new place we call home.
September 11th, 2001, a day we will all remember here in America and around the world. I was sitting on a plane at the Baltimore/Washington airport waiting to fly to New England through New York air space when we were all asked to disembark the plane and to go home. That day, 2,996 people would lose their lives.
As a kid I lived in insecurity. I was insecure in school, in relationships, in trying new things and in my family relationships. Insecurity is defined as instability, self-doubt and a lack of self-confidence. That was me. There were plenty of reasons for my insecurity, but at the time it was just life and trying to grow up.
Jesus once approached a woman at a well that was not married, but He told her she had had five husbands in the past. Jesus identified the longing in her heart to be whole and He let her know that another husband would not do that for her. His answer: to draw living water from Him – a spring of eternal life. His answer to this woman’s insecurities, her longing to find relational fulfillment in men and her insatiable desire for wholeness was met in one encounter with the Messiah.
Journalist and author Mignon McLaughlin once said, “A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.”
So often marriage is like a mirror and we get to see our real self through the reflections of our life mate. After all, who knows you better than your spouse? Who better to reflect back to you the image you are projecting?
When the city fathers of New York thought about the future growth of their city, they laid out the streets and numbered them from the center outward. In the beginning there were only six streets in their planning maps, so they decided to go crazy and project growth.
How about you; do you sell your vision short? How far can you see? How far do you desire to see and project? God has vision for you and through you. Dream with Him!
I recently read a Reader’s Digest article called, The Nature Cure and was totally intrigued. I will share some of the information from that article below. It seemed to verify what I have believed and incorporated into my life, certainly appreciating that this periodical would help to validate this belief.
Did you know pediatricians are now telling parents with young families to regularly visit parks so the whole family can de-stress and play? When is the last time you went camping, hiking in the mountains, visited gardens, introduced your child to the wonders of a stick, sat around a campfire, watched a sunset, played in a creek, observed butterflies or sat by a lake?
Someone once shared with me these words, “I’ll respect him when he starts respecting me.” Still another said, “When she starts acting respectable, I’ll show her respect.” Really? Since when is respect conditional upon another respecting you?
I love how author Gary Thomas weighs in on this very subject, “As our partners and their weaknesses become more familiar to us, respect often becomes harder to give. But this failure to show respect is more a sign of spiritual immaturity than it is an inevitable pathway of marriage.” He also notes, “When there is mutual respect in marriage, selflessness becomes contagious…. If you want to obsess about them [weaknesses], they’ll grow, but you won’t!”
There are those who attend church on Sunday and live according to anything but those thoughts Monday through Saturday. I can remember as a young teen listening to the minister read the scripture Sunday morning and then close by saying, “Here endeth the word of the Lord for today.” I remember thinking, I’ve got news for you; here endeth the word for the week for me. So, yes, I’ve felt like a fake and I’ve been a fake at times.
Marriage minefields are fields where we have buried or hidden devices (memories) just below the surface. We actually move forward in life by frequently looking backward. Most day-to-day life is not filled with new revelation but memory. Memory helps us to find our way home after work. Memory is used daily in order to live life. Life without the ability to recall even the slightest, most mundane details or important ones would be disastrous.
Some of our memories contain lies or misbeliefs and still others are inaccurate. It was not uncommon for John and Elizabeth (not their real names) to experience knock-down, drag-out arguments. In sheer frustration late one evening, John looked at Elizabeth and said, “That’s it; I’m out of here!” Immediately, Elizabeth went silent and fell to the floor in a fetal position, where she sobbed uncontrollably. Even though John ran immediately to his wife, knelt beside her, and desperately tried to console her, it was as if he had left. Elizabeth didn’t or couldn’t hear his voice or acknowledge his presence. John later discovered that when his wife was six years old, she overheard her parents fighting. Her father’s words rang out as he screamed, “That’s it; I’m out of here!” Elizabeth never saw her father again
Elizabeth was no longer fighting with John; she was wrestling with pain-filled memories planted in a minefield just below the surface. Was it the argument they needed to resolve, or was it Elizabeth’s past hurts that needed to be healed? From many stories like this one, I have come to believe that most relationship issues in the present have a connection to the past; therefore, what seem like marital issues are often individual issues. I am convinced that when Jesus heals our individual issues, sins, hurts, and disappointments, marriage relationship issues can also be healed. *
Steve Prokopchak 