Tag Archives: Marriage

Forever and Ever…Amen

SorrowfulDo you believe that God can work in the hard stuff life doles out? I have lived it and maybe you as well. Please stop by where I am guest posting at Holly Barrett’s Testimony Tuesday” to share the goodness of the Lord! He will meet us when we ask.

This post was featured at Holly Barrett’s Testimony Tuesday as a guest blog on April 14, 2015, however that link no longer available.

It was a year…a year when many issues came to the surface and I was forced to take a serious look at myself and my marriage covenant. I felt hopeless, bound to a yucky body, a yucky marriage and a difficult son. To be perfectly honest, I wanted out of it all and I began to ponder the simplicity of just calling it quits on life.

When I was just an early teen in NYC, I couldn’t handle life then either and being in an unstable state of mind I downed my mom’s Valium and hoped to never wake up…but I did. I was rescued only to find out that I couldn’t escape my problems by just taking pills, or drugs, or alcohol or by delving into relationships. I just wanted to be loved!

But this time it was different. I was in my early forties, I was a Christian woman and had been for about 13 years but I was also disillusioned with life and my ‘faith’. Somehow I was deceived in my looking for love in all the wrong places I thought all these peripherals could make life liveable. A man who was stable, who could help me with my wild and crazy kids, a new home, a satisfying job in Christian radio and friends, I finally had some friends!

I had been recently hired at our local Christian radio station for full-time work as a bookkeeper and being the “Words of Affirmation” girl that I am, I was getting the strokes. Kimberly, you are doing a great job! Keep up the great work. You see, we had lost our manager from a tragic accident the previous fall and jobs were shifted around allowing me to begin full-time work.

Going to work became my escape. I could escape the craziness of home life that involved an angry husband, teenagers with one being extremely problematic.

At home I began to hate who I was becoming. I had started perimenopause and if you have ever been there you know exactly what I’m talking about…it stinks! I hated what my body was doing putting on excessive amounts of weight and water retention. I didn’t want anything to do with being intimate with my husband which sure didn’t help anything! We were all a mess! If either of us had uttered leaving, it wouldn’t have taken much for one of us to just go!

One night on my way home from working late (learning curve), I knew I would be hollered at for a late supper and who’s going to run kids to where and pickup whom…yup, I could just hear it. As I pulled my car in the garage. A song came on that broke my heart, reminding me of who is in control and beckoning me to remember my covenant. I clung to my steering wheel with tears running all over and listened…God was speaking to me through the words of John Starnes song, “I Plead the Blood”.

I remembered my covenant and I plead the blood over my family and home asking the Lord to help me be true to my words that I would never, ever again divorce! And He did just that…as I  prayed that the Lord would my husband joy and give me a love for him that had waned through years of disappointments.

Soon after I heard the Lord prompt me to pray for my guys (husband and two sons, one of whom was then in a locked treatment facility) to go to Promise Keepers in Minneapolis. So I did and my husband and oldest were able to go! It was at this juncture in his life that he recommitted his life to the Lord!

Friends, things did begin to gradually change. My husband does smile and laugh and can be joy-filled at times. He has become a man of God who is growing closer and closer to the Lord and to me. As for me, I would say that I love him more than I ever have! And we will celebrate 29 years in October!

I know my story isn’t like yours, but I do know that my God is the same as yours. I am not going to try to visit your scenario and tell you what to do. I am however going to remind you that He never changes and that He can be trusted with whatever impossibility we are willing to give to Him.

In Matthew 6:33 we are reminded of where to turn in our times of need. And in Philippians 4:6,7 we are instructed to be anxious for nothing, to pray about everything, and to be thankful in all things. When we are obedient to respond his way we are filled with the peace that even passes ALL understanding! Will you trust Him?

KD cropped sqSince 1990, Kimberly Nyborg, has worked at Northern Minnesota’s Christian radio station. She has served as host of a daily two hour music program for Psalm FM radio since 2004. Kimberly is involved in Women’s ministry and she speaks for various women’s events around the Midwest. She makes her home with her husband Jerry, in the “Icebox of the Nation”, International Falls, MN.

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My Right to be Right?

Humility1There will be those days when you wonder who you are really living with and comments are made that are hurtful and seem to come out of nowhere! But then I think at this point in my marriage relationship that we have come too far for that! Well guess what, even though my husband and I just celebrated our 28th anniversary, we can still fall into a nasty slump with each other. It still isn’t pleasant and it still hurts!

However, I am learning to see that it is important that when those crazy moments come that truth is what I need to focus on. Do we still love each other? Does he know that I still love him? In these times I need to let this guy know that yes I am hurt but that nothing can make me love him less, even if he is being cranky and saying hurtful things. Oh how our mouths can get us in trouble! And whether you admit it or not we all say hurtful stuff at times!

For me some time has to lapse so I can mull things over and settle down and see clearly that number one: I am not battling him but I am battling against our enemy the devil who would love to see our marriage fall by the wayside. Second is that we can get through this onslaught. Okay…and so how does this happen?

My word in this season has been humility. I do not believe that resolutions happen without it! I have to stop and be willing to look not only at him and his behavior toward me but I have to look at me. What did I say or do that may have fed into the heated argument. Finally, can God bring us through this? Well of course He can and He will. But am I willing to let go of my right to be right? Or exercise my right to “give him what for” because he was nasty and ugly to me? My battle is won by letting God know I was hurt and asking Him to show me how to bring about a right resolution without driving the wedge deeper into our relationship. Then I asked God to show me how to have a humble spirit or attitude when we discuss the situation.

I often pray out to God Psalm 51:10-12 and it really sets the tone for my attitude so that I can come to my offender in humility and ask his forgiveness in my part of this wrongdoing. I will say however that my guy’s heart is turned when I tell him that it really hurts when someone you love treats you unkindly (then describe the way I saw it played out.) It needs to be gentle and without intimidation. Proverbs 15:1 sure is the key isn’t it!

Oh that it would always play out like that! Or that we would never ever again, have a misunderstanding. That would be grand! However, I am learning from these instances after all these years! My hot headed responses are giving way to a more gentle and godly approach that leads to a resolution we all can grow from! After all, our Father has shown us the perfect example of that very response…

“Or do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and tolerance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance?”  Romans 2:4 (NASB)

What are you willing to lay down to enter in to a resolution?

What good quality about your loved one can you point out in reconciliation?

Lord, I know that there are plenty of days when I won’t do it right. I ask you to give me your discernment when it comes to disagreements and remind me that I have relinquished my right to be right! Instead I will choose to do the right thing for Your sake and glory, in Jesus Name!

What God has Joined Together…

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Love is…

Do you believe in marriage?

I think a lot of us would say of course we do…

But then life happens and things get rough and times get tough and the winds of adversity beat on our united front and we begin to think ‘what am I doing in this situation..it has to be better somewhere else…’

From Matthew 19:5,6 we find common words spoken over bazillions of wedded couples:

‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?  So they are no longer two but one flesh.  What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”

When life gets hard it calls for grit and guts to hang in there and trust that God will work it all together for good. Click To Tweet Life is definitely difficult today and there is a plethora of egocentric screaming going on in and around each and every one of us!  When the proverbial honeymoon period is over and its time to get down to business and live life, old self-gratification waltzes back into our thinking and then “it is all about me” becomes our song.

As a young mom, emotionally immature and needy I didn’t know how to look beyond my own needs when I finally got married with my one son born out of wedlock, I was looking for someone to take care of us. No faith to sustain me except in myself and that was pretty pathetic. My first marriage ended prematurely leaving me with three children that I didn’t have a clue how to raise and so it was easy to find myself back in another relationship.

Thankfully, God intervened in my life and He began to turn me from upside down to Christ-side up. What a process indeed. However, I will be ever so ready to say that I have made the choice to go it the long haul.

I am done being a quitter and a runner! I want God to be glorified in my life and in the example that my marriage makes in a world gone awry. I am a woman of God, and if I say I believe in Him then I better put my faith into action by trusting Him even when it hurts! And guess what, I’m not talking upon condition either.

Is it stinkin’ hard? At times, you bet it is. Like when we both look pretty ugly at each other and want to demand our way. But life is messy and relationships are some of the messiest stuff out there. But you see, if I’m supposed to point others to Jesus then I better quit pointing at myself and demanding my rights.

Then there is this forgiveness issue…pride says “I’m right and you are wrong!” But love says “I’m so sorry, will you forgive me?”

Humility1

Remember this familiar description of love in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 in the Message paraphrase:

Love never gives up. Love cares more for others than for self. Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have. Love doesn’t strut, Doesn’t have a swelled head, Doesn’t force itself on others, Isn’t always “me first,” Doesn’t fly off the handle, Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others, Doesn’t revel when others grovel, Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth, Puts up with anything, Trusts God always, Always looks for the best, Never looks back, But keeps going to the end.”

I want others to know that it does work. But also, that it may take some elbow grease in the process. Like scrubbing away me to see I am in this with another.

Love this song from Casting Crowns that points to the fact that most times we don’t enter a marriage with the intent on giving up our selves. But if it is going to work it must. What God has Joined Together… Click To Tweet

My question to you is this…will you fight for marriage?

Will you lay aside your demands and get on your knees and ask God to show you how to make a difference in your life, not change him Lord, but in you?

No prize is worthy of having if it has come easily! And your marriage my be a diamond in the rough so keep fighting for it! Click To Tweet