HEALTHY MARRIAGE

In the spring of 2021 I was intensely finishing up the last few courses on my doctorate while overseeing on-line school with our 3 granddaughters. I had to do a book report on a 900 page comprehensive Christian counseling textbook that, in great detail, outlines many problems we humans have and how to approach each one in an effort to help people overcome the issues in their relationships. One of the teachers stated that she went to school to learn helping skills but was disappointed that she still did not have adequate tools in her kit to do that. This is one of the reasons I went back to school after we became empty nesters – to learn helping skills. 

We are so good at looking at the problems in relationships and having answers to help fix things. However, we also need to see what a good, healthy marriage looks like. This is the marriage, not the individuals who make up that marriage, for we humans are all flawed and glorious messes.

 Characteristics of a Healthy Marriage include:

 Time spent together   

  Mutual spiritual habits

  Negotiating ability

  Maturity

  Play and humor

  Intimacy

  Willingness to make commitment

    Loving action often create loving feelings 

    Common goals

  Agree on basic standard of living

  Agree on how to raise children

  Healing existing wounds

  Roles – agree – change

  Attitude of  mutual submission to each other 

   Sharing everything

  Safety

This was the lecture that gave me the inspiration to begin writing a book on How we Stayed Married for 50 Years. We were planning our first 50^th anniversary party and had to cancel it due to covid. Then we had to cancel the second one and finally celebrated publicly this past summer with a pig roast and about 100 people including family and neighbors and long time friends. And it rained. It was awesome. That is why we rented a tent.

So, two years ago, I did a quick brain dump and started to make a list of the ideas splattered all over a big sheet of paper and realized that I was writing an ABC list. There were so many good words for most of the letters. I started writing whatever came to mind for the word that I had. I found myself recalling so many stories from our long life together. Many were happy stories. Many were not so happy. I actually set up this blog more than a year ago and typed out most of the stories. But then, I started second guessing myself and the whole project paused. I finally took the plunge this past summer and started posting weekly. But not until I got my Sweetie involved as we edited each post together. Then he started writing a few pages. We are on the cutting edge of learning to write together. How novel. 

He writes: as sometimes happens, in our relationships with our spouse, we don't always carry through with our best intentions like words of praise, comfort, encouragement, listening, acts of kindness. It might be time to just hit the reset button. We've had wildly creative imaginations of things to do that keep us saying "I'm glad we're together". Gondola rides in the Rockies. Riding horses along the beach in the wake of the Pacific Ocean in Tofino. Taking a trip to the moon - well, maybe laying on the grass together looking at the moon on a clear summer's night or watching a falling star. Taking walks through the cornfields. Delivering baby calves on cold winter nights then climbing back into a nice heated water bed. Together. 

If I give all I posses to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind. it does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres (1 Cor 13:3-6 NIV). 

GUESTS

There is a difference between having family and visitors sleeping over and having houseguests. We live in a big old 1840s farmhouse with an 1880s addition that added a back kitchen and 2 large bedrooms with walk-in closets above the original kitchen. A separate staircase gives access to these rooms that were forgotten for many years. They were not heated. The plaster on the ceilings was cracked and falling. The rooms stored debris from different generations. During the 1980s we took in several families who needed a place for a few months. This was the beginning of a ministry of hospitality. 

After 2 winters of family and children, one bathroom, no TV, no internet or Wi-Fi or devices, we gutted these 2 upstairs rooms, added electricity and heat, turned the larger closet into a bathroom, removed the other closet, and voila - we had 2 large guestrooms. We bought a new waterbed for ourselves and moved the antique 4 poster bed into the newly named Blue Room and another bed into The Brown Room. These rooms were kept ever ready for guests. And they came. Hundreds of them. Not all at the same time. They came from all over Canada and all over the world. Some stayed for a night. Some for a week or 2 and some for a few  months and even a year or more. Individuals or whole families. Missionaries. Quilt retreats. Katimavik students. Family. Guernsey friends. Homeless teens. The bathroom walls and ceiling became a guest book. We have been enriched as guests shared their cultures.

With houseguests in one upstairs part of the house with a bathroom and the family in the other upstairs part, there was a separation of space. The downstairs was common ground.  We, and I mean me, needed to have our own space to withdraw to.

Something we learned from houseguests. It could bring out the best in us. Or, it could bring out the worst in us. Ken and I learned much about ourselves and each other in those days. Sometimes we were drawn closer together as we prayed together for our guests with difficulties in their lives. Other times there developed a wedge between us as we unknowingly took on some of the crap they brought in with them. We eventually learned to ask God to show us the lesson he wanted us to learn so we could grow and move on.   

We discovered that we use our best manners with other people and saved the anger and frustrations for each other. How did we feed all those visitors? We live on a farm and have (had before we sold the cows) all the milk we ever needed and lots of beef. We had a big vegetable garden and froze and canned food to last the rest of the year. We also learned to make do with what we had. Second helpings were not always optional. Guests helped with the dishes and meal prep. They were part of the family and often had responsibilities in the barn with animals and chores. This is not a hotel with room service. 

With our son and his family now living in the 4 rooms in the main upstairs, Ken and I have moved up to the guest rooms. This past summer, as we celebrated our 50+ years of marriage and had many family visiting and a lot of guests coming, we put yet another toilet in a hall closet. There is less drama on getting ready for school mornings. Also, our son has a fancy trailer with heat and air conditioning sitting out in the yard that sleeps 8. This has been an incredible blessing. 

So, yes, Guests have played a huge part in developing our marriage. 

Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it (Heb 13:2).

TOGETHER

Reflections from Ken: 

Marriage can be described as "and the two shall become one". That's together. From that first encounter with one another you can't wait to be together again. For us there was a year of long distance relationship. At 18, Chris went away to college in Kemptville - 5 hours away - we had the odd weekend together, some holidays. We wrote each other - steamy letters of "can't wait to see you again"- to be together. Then came the engagement - that commitment to each other. You do things together - maybe sports, movies, common interests, time with other friends, sometimes work, walking together, planning the wedding, the honeymoon, even just snuggling. 

Then the marriage - your first child - here's the scene: 

You and your wife walking together, holding hands with your son/daughter between you. Is this the end of the together? It could be. 

Here's where you plan your family together - some goals. We're talking about discipline, school choices, sharing your faith, religious beliefs, even food choices. 

So now as you do with your kids when you have them help you plant that beautiful little spruce tree in your front lawn so 15 years later when they come home from university for the holidays they walk in the yard  and proudly say, "I helped plant that 30-40 foot beauty.' 

So the same with your wife/husband

Maybe on your first or tenth anniversary plant that rose bush by the house and now ten years later there is a magnificent array of flowers to remind you of what you did together. So build positive memories. It might be as you drive past that group of cabins in Muskoka where you spent $70 for a week long honeymoon stay - including food - a private beach - a motor boat and gas, or where you and your family had the amazing time together at the water park on a vacation in BC. 

For us, one night as we lay in bed both awake at 2 am window open, we hear the loud screeching of tires and then the crash of a car. That quickens your senses . We jump out of bed together run downstairs to get the truck and drive up the road to the railway crossing to find a young couple's car in the ditch by the tracks on their way home from a Kitchener band competition. They had fallen asleep. Not badly injured, we took them into our care and made appropriate phone calls (pre cell phones) and waited with them until a tow truck and their parents arrived. We asked them if they knew what would happen if they had died. We shared our faith in Jesus with them then went back to bed. What a night - together! 

As you age, things change - could be work circumstances, interests, physical abilities/limitations, any number of these can cause a breaking apart. So, we must take time to go on dates. When was the last time you and your spouse laughed together? Plan together? Eat meals together?  Enjoy your children together? Your grandchildren? Together? You may be their best example of what a forever marriage can look like. So give it your best shot. 

Do two walk together, unless they have agreed to do so (Amos 3:3 NIV).

FORGIVENESS

Reflections from Ken: 

In 50 years of marriage there are a lot of opportunities for forgiveness. There are two parts. The first is the "for" part. This is forgiveness for me. This is for when I ask my Sweetie to forgive me when I've done her wrong, spoken rudely, or just plain not respected her in some way. 

When Chris's dad died was a good example to me of what not to do. The night she came home from his death bed, she just wanted to talk to me about it. Well, couldn't she see I was completely engrossed in my TV hockey game? Clearly this was not the right time or was it? It would be years before I understood the full impact of the hurt I caused her that night. The rejection I gave only solidified some of the feelings she may have had from her father years ago when he didn't really understand how important it was to positively affirm his children. When I came to my senses, and realized the importance of my actions and asked for forgiveness, a weight was lifted from our marriage. Chris just wanted to be heard and have a shoulder to cry on and to know how important her feelings were to me. 

The second part is the "give" part. It's when I give forgiveness to others like my wife when I've been hurt. Part of this is just having a "forgiving heart". That way, whether or not forgiveness is asked for, I'm not being controlled by or constantly living in the feeling of hurt. If I hear myself saying words like "you always" or "you never", there's a good chance I have not really forgiven her. Sometimes we need help with this one.   

Forgiveness is all about not living in the negative past, but living in the best possible moment right now. Sometimes we need someone to talk to. Our story matters. Healing can take place. It’s all about restoring relationship with our Creator, being filled with joy, overflowing and abounding in love. A new beginning. In our marriage, we’ve experienced this with each other as we forgive (many times over – sometimes daily), big things and little things. Like the time Chris got attacked by a cow in the barn yard early one morning. She came in covered from head to toe in muddy cow poop. I made the mistake of laughing at her (in front of others) rather than making sure she was okay.  I was not aware that she was in a state of shock and just needed to be held. And I suppose I should have taken her advice and gotten rid of the cow because she carried on that behavior. Anytime Chris tried to tell me her feelings about that moment, I could only think of how funny she looked. 

It was 20 years before she could see my perspective, but only after she realized that she had done a similar thing to our 12 year old son when he was showing a 4-H calf at the local fair. As he was coming around the ring in the novice showmanship class, his calf started to lay down. The farmer standing next to Chris commented, "calf looks a bit low in the shoulder" and that made her crack up. Our son looked up and saw her laughing but he thought it was at him. Last night she apologized to him and asked forgiveness before she could finish this post.

We all need forgiveness. We all need to give forgiveness. We all need to ask forgiveness. It is never too late. We can forgive others because Jesus first forgave us. The greatest story ever told is about forgiveness in the greatest book ever written.

"In prayer there is a connection between what God does and what you do. You can't get forgiveness from God, for instance, without also forgiving others. If you refuse to do your part, you cut yourself off from God's part" (Matt 6 14-15 The Message).

_______

Doctor Christina Forster has been married to Ken, her Farmer Sweetie, for 52 years. Both are retired from their multi-generational, high profile Maplehurst Dairy Farm in Southern Ontario Canada and now enjoy travel together and grandparenting.

Chris has been blogging at Quilting at the Farm for 10 years engaging with quilters around the world. She holds a Master of Theological Studies and a Doctor of Ministry Christian Counseling. One of her passions is to see marriages restored by husbands and wives receiving healing of the heart, mind and spirit. This is done by allowing God to speak into painful memories through the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross in the power of the Holy Spirit. She has published one book Denine: One mother's journey with a profoundly handicapped child and has several others in process.  

ENOUGH

How do we know when enough is enough? How much money is enough? How much stuff is enough? How much time is enough? How much work is enough? How much responsibility? How much stress? How much grief?

So many things were going on in our life when we turned 50. We were 30 years into our marriage. If you had been a fly on the wall then, what would you have seen? Our children were grown and gone. We were empty nesters. But that was in the house. In the barn, we were different people. We worked alongside Ken's father milking cows and doing all the farm work. There was so much anger - between the two of them and between the two of us. There was so much noise at milking time with all the machines, the cows, the flies, the mud. 

And in the middle of all that, grieving after the death of my father, the whole farm business got turned over to us. Now, not only was I milking cows daily, I was going to school part time with reading and homework and research papers and exams. Now I had to take over doing all the farm books and financial responsibilities. We were in a full-blown para-menopause transition. In the barn we all screamed at each other. In the house we seldom talked. Depression was my constant companion. Ken just kept on doing what he always did. I was the one who took on most of the extra responsibilities. We had 5 years of back taxes to reconcile; the furnace broke down one fall and the next fall it backed up and filled the house with greasy residue because the chimney was plugged. I hired help to clean up the house, but that brought out the worst in us. In me. Never in public. Just the two of us. Thoughts of suicide screaming in my head.

In the middle of all this, God spoke. I had been crying myself to sleep most nights for a couple of years, crying out to God. He was silent then. But He spoke. It was the same voice that spoke to me the night our daughter died. One evening, as I was walking through the kitchen, I heard that distinct voice in my head. "If you take your life, how can you tell married couples that I AM Enough?" 

It is interesting that, during that semester, I had to keep a homework journal for the course I was taking - Counseling Theories. I failed the exam, but I have the weekly journal notes of what was going on in our lives, in my head, in my heart. Of all the courses I have taken, all the degrees I have earned, what I learned that fall is what I recall with most clarity. God is Enough. As for counseling theories, I like the one that Jesus used when he taught. Change the way you think. This changes the way you feel. This allows you to change the way you behave. 

Today I am being reminded that I am enough because Christ in me is enough. I do not have to do anything to please God. I do not have to earn brownie points by doing enough good deeds. I am enough. I am loved. I am enough because God loves me. God chose me. And God chose Ken to be my husband. He is a keeper. 

Jesus said, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me (John 14:6 NIV).

DEATH

When you have been married for 50 years you will experience the death of someone close. How you respond to the grief has everything to do with how you perceive death. Death is not the enemy if you have Jesus in your heart. For a Christian, physical death is absence from the body but being present with the Lord in heaven forever. Mercy Me’s song I Can Only Imagine gives us an emotional glimpse of what it might be like. Having no fear of death gives you a greater opportunity to enjoy life.

We were in our twenties when we were dealing with the everyday issues of a profoundly handicapped child who was often sick. It was a miracle that she lived to be five years old. We had less than a day to process the thought of her dying. This whole story is in my book Denine: One mother’s journey with a profoundly handicapped child (FriesenPress).

Ken and I had very different responses to this. He had shut up his pain and had no one to talk to all those years, not that he would have talked about it anyway.

The night she died, God had given me a vision of her dying in my arms. Asking me for a response. When I released her to God, I felt a great joy bubbling up inside. She died that very hour. I walked a foot above the ground in peace. I knew she was in heaven walking, no dancing, with Jesus. Ken did not have the same perception. Not until a year later when he was invited to surrender his heart and life to Jesus.

Years later, I was not prepared for how I would respond to the death of my father. He was 81 years old, unable to speak, sitting in a wheelchair in a London airport on Sept 11, 2001. He arrived home four days later to hear from me that his tests showed he had cancer in the larynx. Seven weeks later he died. I sat by his side as he took his last breath. I was unable to cry. There was so much stored up anger inside me about our father-daughter relationship and I was in the early part of my nightmare menopause journey. I was unable to articulate my thoughts and feelings with anyone. Ken was in his own world of anger and grief. Our life together then was not pretty.

However, one night we were driving home from a visit to his brother in New York. God had ministered to both of us that weekend. He was driving way too fast for my comfort on the expressway and saying very unkind things to me, which was not characteristic of him at all. He asked why I was crying. I responded with, “I don’t know why you are speaking to me like this, but I am committed to this marriage! I really want to open the car door and jump out to get away from your words.” He said nothing more for a couple of days, then announced that he recognized his problem with anger and went for counseling to get it under control. It took me a few more years to acknowledge mine and receive healing. We all grieve differently. 

So many  marriages do not survive the death of a child. So many marriages do not survive dealing with the daily demands of life with a special needs child. Today there are many support groups that have been created to come alongside parents. We did not have one of those. But we discovered that God knew what was going on in our lives. God had chosen us to be the parents of a special child. God had a plan for us. Keep reading and you may discover that God knows what is going on in your life and has a plan for you also. 

 "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." (Jer. 9:11 NIV)

 

CHILDREN

Most marriages are blessed with children. However, many marriages today have couples focusing a lot of time and energy and resources as they deal with infertility. There is the eager joy of anticipation, then the heart-break of pregnancy loss or the realization of infertility. The emotional turmoil can be devastating to a marriage relationship. Is it his fault? Is it her fault? 

And what about the infertile couple seeking adoption? The whole process takes time and resources, waiting to see if this time they will be chosen, or being rejected yet again. What about fertility clinics? The time. The cost. The drugs. The procedures. Do we do IVF or IUF? Then waiting to see if the embryos "take". A heart beat or two. Then only one. Or none. Another pregnancy loss. The physical toil. The emotional drain. 

Our choice was for me to be a full time stay at home wife and mother. This is what my mother did. This is what my husband's mother did. But our situations were unique. We grew up on the farm. Our mothers worked on the farm alongside our fathers and the children started helping out as they were able. Toddlers ran up and down between the cow mangers. Children fed cats and later the baby calves. Teens learned to drive tractors and pitch hay and milk cows. Times were not always rosy and filled with joy. Sometimes an older teen was encouraged to get a job off the farm to see how the world treated its workers. 

Children are a blessing. But so often parents, especially the moms, are so sleep deprived and worn and the dad's working long hours to support the family are often physically absent for caregiving.  I did not have a full night's sleep for nearly eight years after our children were born. 

Our dairy farm lifestyle required Ken to be in the barn every morning and every evening feeding and milking cows on a daily basis. I got the children ready for school and drove them to school for years. Suppertime was often delayed so we could eat together as a family. He missed out on a lot of time with our kids because of this. but we did have family time. We raised our children without television or computers or devices. We played games and read books. During the summer time, the children rode their bikes out to the field to take a picnic lunch to share with their dad. In the winter they skated and tobogganed and had snow ball fights. 

Our first daughter was born profoundly handicapped and required a lot of  attention and appointments. Enter two more babies, potty training, the death of their sister when they were too young to remember her. I wrote her story for our children. It is interesting, our grandchildren have been reading the book. 

How does having children affect the relationship between husband and wife? I guess a lot depends on how well we are doing as a couple with the other 25 letters.     

Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. (1 Peter 5:7 NIV)