Twenty-two years ago today, May 1, I was on a date in Atlanta with my now husband, David. I liked his confidence. He liked my decisiveness and that I asked to finish his burrito as we sat at the original Moe’s in Buckhead. We were on a no pressure lunch date that turned into spending the entire day together because we were enjoying each other’s company. Decades later and I am still enjoying his company, no longer decisive for myself (I blame it on being a mom and a teacher), and still eating at Moe’s. In fact, I just left the Moe’s closest to our Tennessee home with two hungry teenage boys. I was not connecting the venue to the date until my youngest son while eating his burrito asked, “When does a couple celebrate their anniversary? Is it the day they met or the day they got married?” His question, unrelated to him knowing today marked my first date with his father, prompted me to snap a picture of the three of us at Moe’s to send David with a complementary message commemorating the day.
Here is one of the biggest lessons I have learned in marriage. My husband will live freer when I am looking to Jesus to be my strength rather than looking to him, my spouse, to be my strength. This lesson can apply to any of my relationships. My sons, extended family, friends, co-workers, and students will live freer and learn freer when I am strengthening myself in the Lord my God and not in them. No human can come close to playing God, yet I can demand it from those close to me. This is not fair to them or to me. They end up exhausted from not being able to measure up to God, and I end up frustrated from internally requiring they be perfect. My twisted perspective is only and always straightened by the Word of God.
This morning I was reading back through parts of King David’s life in 1 Samuel. In chapter 30, we get a story of the Amalekites ransacking Ziklag, the land in Philistine territory given to David (1 Sam 27:6). While David was away from his home, the Amalekites burned Ziklag and took everyone captive, including David’s wives. When David and his men return to a destroyed and empty town, “David was greatly distressed because the men were talking of stoning him” since they were bitter from their families being captured. Verse 6 brings us clarity. It tells us that “David found strength in the Lord his God.” This is the same David who writes in Psalm 28:7, “The Lord is my strength and my shield. My heart trusts in him, and I am helped.” I have never had my home burned, been chased by someone trying to kill me, had my family taken, or led a country, but based on my track record with bad days in suburban life, my first response is not to find my strength in the Lord. My first words are not ‘my heart trusts in you, Lord, my strength and my shield.’ But because I know this about myself, I am constantly going back to God’s Word, and he takes his double-edged sword and gets to work on my heart.
My prayer I journaled after applying 1 Samuel 30:6 was this – Father, may you continue to be my strength as I strengthen myself in you, the Lord my God. Forgive me for thinking my husband should be my strength. Let me free him up from feeling like he needs to be my strength by being so caught up in your strength. Let me free him to have time for himself to take care of himself spiritually, physically, emotionally and mentally. I want to be a good wife by letting you come through for him rather than him feeling the weight to come through for me.
That prayer is not from me, the sinner. It is from me, the one who God indwells through his Spirit. God is faithful to complete the work he first begun in us. Jesus saves us and he transforms us. He is the believer’s strength. And as Psalm 28 continues to proclaim, he is the one who hears our cry for mercy. He is the one we call to for help. Jesus causes our hearts to leap for joy because he is our salvation. We are his inheritance. He is our shepherd, and he carries us forever!
Believers can look to relationships, jobs, reputations, competence, accomplishments, and addictions to be our strength, but they will all fail us every time. Only one who is supreme, sovereign, and outside of space and time can hold that seat of being our strength. The mirror of marriage shows me this truth regularly. When I allow God to be God, letting my strength come from him and strengthening myself in him, the people around me live freer.