But God will help

Psalm 140:1-2, 12-13 O Lord, rescue me from evil people. Protect me from those who are violent, those who plot evil in their hearts and stir up trouble all day long. . . But the Lord will help those they persecute; he will give justice to the poor.

Forty-two years ago, surrounded by family and friends, flowers and music, Dave and I said “I do” on the shore of a lovely lake in Wisconsin. We had no idea that day of what would unfold in this less-than-perfect union. We didn’t know how vulnerable we were to the troubles the enemy of our souls plotted against us.

Last week a friend who was aware of the high divorce statistics for couples with a chronically ill child, and especially, she told me, those whose child is expected to die but then doesn’t, asked me how we had held our marriage together. I laughed at the question. Did she really think Dave and I had been able to do this? No way. There were so many other factors besides Karis’s illness arrayed against us, beginning with the ways our parents’ marriages had affected us and the ways our personalities meshed to form what Dave calls the “perfect storm.” Had it depended just on us, we wouldn’t be together today.

So we celebrate today the fact that the Lord helped us, through the support of friends and family, and the skills of excellent counselors. But, I told my friend, one of the main ways God helped us is by giving Dave a streak of stubbornness. He was determined to do whatever it took to rescue this marriage, after I, frankly, had given up. His was the energy behind the hard work we both did over a couple of intense years to repair what had worn out and broken. Today, in the joy and comfort of a forty-two-year-old marriage that has been through fire and flood, yet survived because of the Lord’s multilayered help, I want to say thank you to my husband for believing so stubbornly in “us.”