Together on Holy Ground
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I don't know how I fell in love with my husband. It just happened. After 20 years of cautiously dating and agonizing and being afraid to fall for the wrong guy, I dove in headfirst and married David eight months after I met him. Maybe the timing was right. Maybe we were both tired of waiting. I believe it was just meant to be.
Six years later, I still believe it was meant to be. But that doesn't mean it's been easy.
A few months after our whirlwind courtship and wedding, I started seeing the reality of the situation: Our window-frame for having children was short (we were both in our 40s. We had to try now if we were ever going to have kids, and even then the chances were iffy). We weren't getting any younger, so if David wanted to go back to school to change careers (which he had been thinking of doing for years), he had to do it now. I was in a soul-crushing corporate job. I didn't think I could last much longer and my company was offering a voluntary termination offer. I could get three months of severance pay while I built up my freelance writing career again. If I was going to make my escape from corporate America, this was the time to do it.
But how would we swing both changing jobs (and in his case, a whole career) if we had a baby? If he went back to school and I had to work, who would stay home to take care of the said baby? If neither of us could stay at home, how would we afford childcare? And we couldn't put off any of our decisions. The clock was ticking.
Somehow in this perfect storm we muddled along, making decisions as wisely as we could. David started a master's program and got a scholarship that would pay for half the tuition. We saw this as a sign that he was moving in the right direction.
But then things started getting a little chaotic. We were counting on David's lucrative part-time freelance editing job to help us pay for expenses while he was in school. But shortly before he started, he learned that the company he was working for was moving all of the editing work in-house. He quickly found another freelance job, but for one-third of the pay.
I had left the corporate world to freelance, but without David's lucrative editing gig, and with him going back to school, we quickly realized I needed a fulltime job again. So when one of my freelance clients offered me a fulltime job, I took it. But a year later I lost it due to the recession.
I had never pictured myself in this situation. In my 20s and 30s, I had dated accountants (three in a row!) to try to ensure my financial stability. I had also imagined that after years of singleness, once I met the right person and got married everything would fall into place and life would get a little easier. But … no. That didn't happen.
Our money situation was in constant flux. Financially secure, we were not. On top of it all, three years into our marriage, after two miscarriages and a failed fertility treatment, we had moved on to attempt to build our family through adoption. After my layoff and with David not yet finished with school, all of that was on hold.
Related Topics:
Career, Dreams, Finances, Marriage, Strengthening, Money, Sacrifice
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Naomi
I don't know what to say because my husband is going through unemployment, going to a year now and the work i do is not very satisfactory but i just have to continue to support the family. All the same, thanks for your encouragements, because its like am seeing my husband as the source of my pain and dissatisfaction, so i wonder just like you did " why did i marry this man". But thank God for your timely article, i found solace in it.
NKL
My husband and I are struggling through similar issues. I make about 2x the salary he does, and he hates his job. He won't quit, won't look for something else--hethinks he needs to provide even if his job drains him. I want him to be happy but don't know how to help him move forward.
Andrea
Wow! My husband took seven years to get his PhD! I can totally relate! We were raising three kids, and although he worked part time his schooling was FULL TIME. So, he did win a fellowship and a grant, but we have lots of student loans that will affect us for the next ten years! But, I can say, it was worth it for all we learned and grew in Christ!
Lynne
I know the sense of pressure the author's husband was feeling. My spouse agreed before marriage to work part-time, and then has refused to do so. Yet he regularly calls my attention to things I cannot buy for us, and expects me to furnish us with better quality things than I can afford. it never ends. It's hard to know how to make peace with someone who keeps reminding you that you should be a better provider, yet will not help? I want to do the right thing, but I don't know what it is. Oh, yes, we have have tried counseling, not once but multiple times. Praying for God's answers.
Kristine
"What is marriage, then, if not loving another person into his or her full potential—even if it means sacrificing your own dreams or security or comfort? If we are truly Christlike, isn't it all joy to lose our lives in order to find them?" I love that paragraph....You put into words, what I find so difficult to articulate to others when they say that they have seen us grow in our marriage through our struggle with infertility for the past 6 years and grieving the loss of our dream of how we thought it was going to happen (biologically). I think you hit the nail on the head perfectly in this article. Thank you.
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