Back in the blogging saddle

Marriage has been on my mind a lot lately, so much so that I did something very out of character for me. I will explain later. I see so many people hurting in their marriage. I see lots of people surviving theirs, just existing together in the same house. I refuse to settle for that. My husband told me yesterday that he was so thankful that we have learned some tools to help our marriage stay strong. I really needed to hear that because I was feeling overwhelmed at the news that someone we know is separated and considering divorce after twenty plus years. My question to him was - is this possible to be happily married for life? It is hard, that is for sure. We recently watched Fireproof and it was better than I thought it would be but it felt too simple. 40 days of being nice to your spouse cannot change the rest of your life.

Anyway, last week Mike and I were sitting in a restaurant. Behind me was a man, I could not see him but I could hear every word he said. I even tried not to listen but he was venting his frustrations very loudly. He was talking about his wife and how she was upset with him and he was clueless. He talked about money problems, communication problems, male-female differences, etc. I could hear the anger, the hurt and the confusion in his voice. He sounded sincere in his efforts to fix it but without much success. Part of his conversation lead me to believe his parents had divorced. He ranted for 25 minutes. Something inside me was screaming for me to say something to him and yet I was scared to death. But I did. When we left I walked up to his table and told him I had heard him. His eyes were as big as saucers. He never said a word. I told him that I had been married a long time and I understood his frustrations. I also told him we had found some help through the grace group ministry. I gave him some contact info and walked off.

Now I am an officially crazy church lady! I was shaking by the time we got outside but I still felt lead to give him that information. Mike could not believe I had done that. I couldn't really either.