God has been doing some work in my heart lately to heal and revise some beliefs I’ve had about marriage. Ethan and Laura started meeting with a pastor for their premarital counseling sessions and I ordered the book he gave them to read. It’s called Christ and the Church by Andrew Richard. I’ve read it almost all the way through and I have to say that I think it is actually a pretty decent book that I’d be okay recommending.

You know, I’ve really had a problem with these pastors who talk about “God’s glorious design” when it comes to the first man and woman in the garden of Eden. Whenever they say it’s the beautiful order that puts the woman under man I cringe now just like they anticipate that I will. They attribute it to my sinful flesh rebelling but I want to say, “Listen, were thorns originally part of God’s glorious order? Pain? Death?”

But like I said recently before, I don’t want to be bitter. Somehow I have to reconcile this in my mind and I think God gave me a way I can do it. Despite the punishments that were brought into the world because we sinned, God is going to work through even these, the things that make us pine and say, “But it wasn’t supposed to be this way.” And just like he did with the death of Jesus, he is working these out for our good.

Like God makes something beautiful out of even the worst things. And like I have also heard it said, we gain more in Christ than we lost in Adam. Meaning, whatever beauty, whatever status, whatever love and desire I once had in Eden is only magnified and multiplied in our marriage to Christ. To submit to my husband is an act of faith in Christ and his promise of redemptive work in the world. This for sure I can gladly do.

Because somehow God will use me, he will bless me, and cherish me. Marriage between man and wife is for this world only because this is the world where God is working redemption. In marriage I am somehow a part of this work. So all of that makes me happy because I don’t have to fight to be heard anymore and even if the teachers and pastors get things wrong there is now enough good that I can in love overlook it.