As a little girl, I lived in a magical world of imagination and make-believe. What glorious days I spent with my dolls in the attic, creating sweet stories of maidens in distress and knights in shining armor, of beautiful and forgotten Cinderellas and rescuing, handsome Prince Charmings.
But nighttime was a different story. That overblown imagination of mine wreaked havoc in the dark. I suffered from terrible nightmares almost every night.
My very resourceful and creative mom came to my rescue….not one of my imaginary cavaliers dashing in on his noble, white steed. She would sit with me on my bed and gently caress my arm and my forehead until I was awake. Soothing me with her quiet words and kisses, she would whisper softy, “I brought the Sweet Dream Drops.” She then would unscrew a little glass bottle and, with her fingertip, place a droplet of the potion on my pillow. Eagerly, I would roll over on my side so I could get my nose nearer the spot. The delightful aroma filled my head and I would sigh with relief. Before too long, I would slip into a peaceful sleep.
Don’t you wish there really was a secret formula that would make all the scary things in life disappear like that? I sure do. But as an adult living in this fallen world, I have sadly come to realize that many of us truly are living, not sleeping, in the middle of many different kinds of very real nightmares. And there isn’t a bottle of anything big enough to bring us the peace and rest and comfort we desperately long for.
Recently, we hosted a marriage retreat featuring Dr. Paul Tripp and a series called The Marriage of Your Dreams. Nearly forty couples, couples of all ages and stages, gathered to listen and learn from this pastor, speaker, writer, and counselor. As I looked around the room, I couldn’t help but wonder if some of the couples, once expectant and smiling brides and grooms, were in fact living out their marriages with fear and trembling, caught up in a painful bad dream. I prayed Dr. Tripp would have words to help them, to help all of us.
For those who attended, here is a mini reminder of what we all heard, God’s words, I think, for navigating our marriages. For those of you who did not attend, here is my big take away.
I thought one of the most astonishing things Dr. Tripp said during the course of the weekend was that it is a miracle that any marriage survives. Not what I was expecting to hear. But he reminded us that marriage is basically the union of two broken, sinful people living in a very broken, sinful world trying to live together in the most intimate and intense of all human relationships—and somehow making it work. At the very least, marriage is difficult. For every couple. Not the stuff of our childhood dreams for sure. And not at all what we expected standing at the altar.
But, Paul Tripp reminded us, God knows that. The fact that we struggle for harmony in our marriages didn’t catch Him off guard. In fact, He uses our difficult marriages for something great and glorious and good. Isn’t that just like Him?
And besides that, Dr. Tripp wanted us all to remember we are not alone. What we have is so much better than a magic potion.
We have God, the Designer of Marriage, the Comforter, the Healer, the Rescuer, the King.
If we’re God’s children, He wants so much more for our marriages than we can imagine, so much so that He in His loving kindness has “unzipped” us and placed the Holy Spirit inside us to live. We are not left to our own frail and faltering resources. The Warrior Spirit has the power to defeat what we cannot and to achieve what we cannot.
Galatians 6 seems to say there are two ways we can live in our marriages. We can walk in the flesh, held hostage to the evil that still lurks in us and trust our own will power, OR we can wisely walk in the Spirit, choosing to move in alignment with the Father’s character and plans, and He will gift us with love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, kindness, self-control—the stuff of the marriages of our dreams. Don’t we all want marriages and relationships overflowing with these graces? Seems like a no brainer.
Jesus died to make this our potential. He died not just to secure forgiveness for our sins but also to deliver us from them here and now. Jesus died so that we as His children would be transformed. He doesn’t want us to just settle for the mess we have created in our homes by choosing our own selfish ways or by simply learning to negotiate each other’s bad days. We can do better. Our Savior is exercising His powerful grace through the Spirit inside us to change us. That’s His plan for us. When we walk in the Spirit, we must understand that is His goal.
And how does He do this? He uses our marriages! Do you see the interconnectedness of this, the beauty of His plan? God wants the best for us—His definition of that, not ours. The “best” we would choose for us would be selfish comfort. But God wants more for us, so He wisely puts us in the comprehensive relationship of marriage and uses the struggles in it to transform us. The conflict and poor communication we experience bring to the surface our flaws and weaknesses, blind spots that need attention. When we choose to walk with Him in this process, to walk in the Spirit, we make our purposes His purposes. We say we want to go in the same direction as our Redeemer. We learn to desire to be changed and cooperate with Him, recognizing that even the painful circumstances, the nightmares of this life, are not wasted. God is all about turning even these into something good and useful, tools in His hands as He molds us into the likeness of His dear Son. The Spirit He has given us, living in us, provides everything we need to let Him do His work.
For example, I am incapable of loving Kenny like I should, so I pray each day that God will help me love him. I know that is God’s plan. He wants to show Kenny His love through me. So I look for ways to do it. My job to love Kenny must be more valuable to me than being right or having peace. As I do this daily, especially when he is not so lovable and I am not so willing, God invades our mess by His grace and grows us to a brand new way of living. He gives me what I lack. He promises me He is near. We are growing and changing and He graces us with His gifts of love, joy, peace, gentleness, and patience…all His precious graces, all things we long for in our home.
To have the marriage of our dreams, we must let our marriages with their inevitable struggles and nightmares continue to refine and rescue us and make us more like Jesus, cooperating with the purposes of God and leaning on the indwelling power and presence of the Holy Spirit for help each day. Who knew the way to have the marriage God desires for us, the marriage I really want too, is to let the sometimes hurtful issues of that very marriage change us into the persons He wants us to be? Seems counter-intuitive…
Please don’t be discouraged if you are in the beginning or middle of His work in your marriage. Trust His good plan even when it hurts or seems impossible. He desires to accomplish something beautiful and is committed to defeating selfishness and transforming you. He gives grace. He gives strength. He gives hope.
Your God is big. He is faithful to complete the work He started in you.
The marriage of your dreams may be on the horizon.
You don’t need Sweet Dream Drops.
—Eileen Hill
