Love Songs 1

We have just finished a wonderful sermon series on marriage at church. I have several thoughts about it, so I'm going to split this into two posts. It was titled "Love Songs", so our band sang several love songs as covers. My top four were Steve's rendition of Michael Bolton's "When A Man Loves A Woman", he totally nailed it and his cover of Paul McCartney's "Baby I'm Amazed". Lance's cover of "Broken" by Lifehouse, "Everything" by Michael Buble and "Amazed" by Lonestar. (Okay, 5 favorites).
I was really struck by the idea that while Steve and I do not have a perfect marriage (oxymoron?) we have a good marriage. And we are so blessed by God to be in this position. We work at it, I will say that, but we came to marriage behind the 8 ball. Both of us had destructive relationships in our past, Steve's a failed marriage. I'm going to leave that situation alone, except to say Steve suffered and had to heal.
I was different. I dated. ALOT. My first real boyfriend at age 19 broke up with me 14 months into our relationship after he had been dating one of his college tutors. I was devastated. I wouldn't let myself really fall for anyone after that. I hurt a lot of really nice guys. First guy I really fell for after that and I fell hard, we dated for 6 months. He broke up with me in the most unique way I ever experienced. He called me at 3:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning very drunk needing a ride home. He was calling from his bachelor party because his "other" girlfriend was pregnant and they had to get married (as good catholics do). He called me because he needed to end it, but he also didn't want to start his marriage off with his wife mad at him because he was too drunk to get home, but didn't want anyone from his family or the wedding party to know. If you wonder why I did this for him, I have a policy anyone that calls me for a ride when they are drunk will get one. If they know me well enough to have my phone number I care enough about them to not want them driving that way. Anyway, this guy was followed up by Nate's father which had these other guys not treated me so bad, this relationship may have been different, but hindsight and all...anyway, broke up with him, found out two weeks later I was pregnant, and I told him I was pregnant, and that's basically the end of that story.
So four years later I get Steve. I would love to say we honored God with dating relationship, but we didn't. We did all sorts of things wrong, and we had several years of trying to make a mixed up family work. Steve was trying to live a godly life earlier on then I was, I was still in survival mode. I have always known Jesus, been a believer most of my life. Jesus has always been a very prominent figure in my life, even when I wasn't trying to live good. He's always been there. But early on in our marriage I figured out that I wouldn't make it as wife, mom and stepmom if I didn't fully lean on Jesus for strength. This is what has made our marriage successful. We have made it a priority to keep God at the center. That's not always easy. There is no "me" time. Steve and the kids got the best of me and I made do with what was left over. I still do. And you know what? God has made sure that what was left over was always enough.
I was just so thankful as I listened to this series that there were things we could do better, and very good reminders, but thankful that God let two broken sinful people turn to him and he made "beauty from ashes".