Diamond Cuts Diamond

I’m not sure the ability to simply hang in there is the best way to judge a great marriage. Tolerating each other for years out of habit doesn’t, in my eyes, qualify someone to give marriage advice. But whenever people hear that we’ve been married for 40 years, they inevitably ask, “What’s your secret?”, as if there’s a magic formula.

Truth be told, that question renders me speechless because I’m as surprised as anyone that I’ve completed a 40-year stint in marriage. Yes, there were people who predicted our marriage wouldn’t last. I now have the privilege of saying to them, “Hold my beer.”

But really, marriage isn’t the magical movie ending where two people ride off into the sunset holding hands as they grow old. Like any worthwhile endeavor that lasts a lifetime, parts of marriage hurt.

Marriage begins with a diamond ring. I’m convinced the deeper lesson is found in the stone, not the ring itself. Unlike the old wedding speech about the ring representing an unending circle, I think the diamond mounted on top tells the better story.

There’s a part of my life most people don’t know about. Believe it or not, I used to facet gemstones. That’s a long story for another day. To produce a beautiful faceted stone, you begin with an ugly rock. You search for one with the greatest potential and the fewest natural flaws. Then you place it on a faceting machine armed with abrasives harder than the stone itself.

Do you see where I’m going?

Step one is choosing the right rock. Among all the ugly rocks, you have to believe you’ve found the one with the greatest potential. That’s where falling in love comes into the story. And don’t fall in love with the hopelessly flawed rock. (Sorry if that isn’t very sentimental, but no one has ever accused me of being a sentimental girl.)

The faceting machine must be equipped with the proper grit. To create those light reflecting facets the hardness of grit must be equal. You can’t create a facet in a diamond with quartz. All participants must be equally invested and equally tough because the abrasive property has to be strong enough to knock off those raw edges. Your grit has to match the challenge. 

Then the grinding begins. The stone is turned at carefully measured angles as each facet is cut, all the while hoping some hidden flaw doesn’t suddenly appear and split it in two. 

At this stage, the stone still isn’t very impressive. It is still dull. It hasn’t been polished yet.

So how do you polish it?

Not with pampering creams, but with more sanding.

This time, however, the coarse grit is gone, leaving only friction.

That’s the part of marriage I compare to the daily rhythm of companionship. You can’t be polished into something beautiful if you aren’t together. The shared routines, ordinary days, hardships, laughter, disappointments, victories, and yes, even the occasional friction, are what create the shine. If you constantly go your separate ways in pursuit of individual adventures, you’ll never develop that brilliance. You have to stay together long enough for the warmth of companionship and even the heat of friction to do their work.

Eventually, that ugly rock becomes something breathtaking. You look at it with pride, fully aware of everything it took to reveal the beauty that was there all along.

So there it is; my secret to marriage.

Choose the right ugly rock.

Bring a similar amount of grit.

Encounter daily life together to generate enough friction to create the sparkle.

After all, diamonds are cut by something just as hard as they are.

Diamond cuts diamond.

Now excuse me while I go knock off a few rough edges. 

Undone: From Ashes to Beauty

Is it possible to be undone and then put back together in a better way? Yes! I know this can happen. 

Here is my story. 

I was raised as a church-going, straight-walking, clean-talking Southern Baptist girl. (Okay, maybe not that clean-talking.) I went to church at least three times a week from birth. I fell in love with Jesus while in my youth group at my church. My whole life was among my Christian circle of family and friends. Until…

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My Stupidity and Stubbornness Caught Up  with Me

At the young age of 18, I made a series of bad choices and ended up locked into marriage to a guy who had no love for me. After we were married he said he didn’t love me and showed this in many non-physical yet gut-wrenching ways. Because I messed up, I figured I deserved this, and because I was brought up to believe that marriage vows were never to be broken, I was looking at a life sentence in this sad existence. I lost contact with all my people. I no longer could go to church or family for solace, and I began to see church looking in from the outside. 

Every day for seven years I pleaded with God to heal my marriage. I went to a year or two of Christian counseling, and yet while I repeatedly grasped at any snippet of hope, nothing really ever changed. I was trapped and alone, and there was no way out that my belief system would approve. 

Then one day my husband told me he was leaving me and my two girls. Even though I was heartbroken at the time, I will be forever grateful to God for this. Within one week, I felt the cool, fresh breeze of relief. I no longer had to try to entice him to love me. I no longer had to hopelessly strive to earn his love. Just like that, a seven-year burden was lifted from my shoulders. I felt mental and even physical relief. God answered my prayer in that He used this evil for my good. Even now, over 40 years later, there isn’t a day that goes by that I am not grateful for this second chance at life and love. 

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D.I.V.O.R.C.E. is a Four Letter Word???

But divorce went against the teachings of my upbringing. A close family member strongly suggested to my parents that they should disown me for this. Thank the Lord, my parents did not disown me. However, I was ashamed of the pain and embarrassment this caused them and I never asked them for any help,  even though I sorely needed it. I would not and could not lean on them for support. I found that lack of child support and digging through the couch for money to buy the next gallon of milk was easy compared to living with someone who didn’t love me. 

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Let Me Be Clear 

Life on earth is not for wimps. When the Bible says God uses all things, those things are not all good things. Much of what I endured was born from sinful choices of myself and others. But all difficulties are not caused by bad choices. Some things happen because there is an adversary, and many horrible circumstances are straight from hell. And sadly, injustices happen, but there is nothing that can’t be turned around and used for the glory of God. 

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Undone and Redone

It was the isolation that was the biggest challenge. This is the experience that undid me. Part of this isolation was because of my shame over my bad choices and how they affected my innocent children. I built a wall to protect myself from others. With the eyes of an outsider, I saw the looks and heard the false rumors about me. Because of this treatment, I began to question everything I once held as truth.

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What God Did

It is difficult to confront your own misguided beliefs, realizing much of what you held as truth was really self-reliance and rule-following. In the Bible, dogmatism is referred to as being stiff-necked. I asked that I learn to never kick another while they are suffering. This truth-seeking process brought about a tenderness and understanding that were not a part of my DNA. It was like learning to walk again. But it resulted in freedom! It is for freedom that Jesus forgave me and set me free! God took my rigid, legalistic ideas and exchanged them for love and understanding. He put me back together better than before. It was Susan 2.0.

So off I went with a joyful new spring in my step. I moved my girls to a new town where I had my first full-time job teaching. Times were tough, but God provided over and over again. I was leaning into Him because He was all I had to carry me through the next day. And carry me, He did! I’ll say it again. God’s love, mercy, and gift of peace were in this difficult time of my life in a palpable way. 

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Here is a picture of the day God gave me a second chance at love. God is so good!

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When I look back, I see the good that God brought about from living through other low blows life has given me. It is from these difficulties that I grew up and learned. I often wonder, if I hadn’t gone through this, would I have ever softened? Without this learning opportunity, would I have been destined to become one of those opinionated old church ladies? I am a witness to God’s using all things to work together for His good. From each bump in the road, God brought about a closer relationship with Him. And if He did this for me, He can do it for anyone. In fact, I hope that you can look back at a point in life where you blew it. It is a pathway to leaning into the Father. 

Here is a very fitting song. Scars by I Am They

Tired of Being Watched?

 Ad nauseam, I hear an ad that asks if I am tired of Google tracking me. Well, it is not just Google, my friend. It seems like we are tracked everywhere we go, with every move we make.(The song is going through my head right now.) We miss the freedom of “Be back home before the street lights come on.” Recently I sat and talked with a group of ladies who quickly recited four or five ways their husbands could track them when they were shopping. I was amazed. Then when I thought about it, nothing they mentioned was out of the ordinary. Holy Cow! What kind of world do we live in? Well, we live in a super safe world. We maintain contact, minimize risk and reduce our worry load with all our devices. 

                         

As I thought about the motivation of these husbands tracking their wives, I realized it came from insecurity, fear, lack of trust as well as love. Our obvious knee jerk response to being tracked is to throw out all our devices and move off the grid. But that is not realistic. 

If you have ever been a parent of a teenager, you know this issue from the other side. We worry about what they are up to and if they are safe because normal teenagers usually don’t tell us what they are thinking or why they are thinking it. As a parent we have doubts about what our child is like when we are not around so we resort to tracking them with technology because this world IS a dangerous place. We wish we understood what motivates them and we do not intend this to be punitive. We only want the best for them and it is our job to protect them in this world.

So what if we did with our spouses and close family exactly what we wish our teenage kids would do? What if instead of becoming more sleuth and secretive, we become more transparent and leaned into it? By transparent I mean honest. What if we told our loved ones the moves we make before we make them? And what if we shared our motivation behind our choices in a conversation instead of forcing our loved ones to depend on technology to figure out what we are up to? Of course that would involve taking the time to sit and talk, which is a whole other subject. And to set an example for our kids we need to be transparent ourselves. Ouch!

Here are a few ideas to get us started. 

1. Post some not-so-flattering honest moments of your day on social media.
2. Tell a loved one about a really stupid thing that you did that makes you anxious when you think about it. 
3. Call or text your love one before every impromptu choice you make in your day.
4. Make sure your next of kin has access to ALL your accounts. 
5. Let your significant other know what you are buying and why before you make your purchases.(This is not the same as asking permission to do so.)

If this list makes you very uncomfortable, you are not alone. I believe that transparency is the key to freedom in our technologically advanced world. Take baby steps to be more transparent and I believe you will find that with honesty comes peace.