I can remember the last time I was isolated with Anna for fourteen days… It was called our honeymoon. What made the time so magical?
- A New Companion
- A New Commitment
- A New Season
Fast-forward nearly ten years later and here we are — isolated together again. Add two kids with one on the way, a pandemic coupled with fear and uncertainty, and you have a recipe for “intense fellowship.”
How do we spend the next fourteen days in isolation without killing each other?
Let’s go back to our first season of isolation and make some applications for today.
A New Companion
Come on, you remember the feeling. I get to spend the rest of my life with this person. Notice the word choice: Get, not have. Goofy in love, you were willing to overlook his disgusting apartment, lack of hygiene, or inability to load a dishwasher properly for the reward of being his companion. Noting was more important than life together.
Take your heart back to the place of blind oneness and revive it. With everything happening in the world with this virus it’s easy to get caught up in stress and anxiety, causing tension in your marriage. Fight fear with oneness. Resist the urge to lash out, sulk in frustration, or direct uncertainty and anger towards your spouse. You may not be honeymooning in this isolation, but you can certainly become a new companion by prioritizing oneness over selfishness.
Action: Apologize for anything you’ve done during this season of isolation and commit to a revived heart for oneness. Ephesians 5:24-33
A New Commitment
If so, say I do. “I do.” As a pastor, I do a lot of weddings. If you’ve been to more than one I’ve done, you know all my cheesy jokes and catchy one-liners. All weddings are the same, and they all include the moving moment of vows. Nothing steals the show at a wedding like seeing two people fighting back tears while making the commitment of a lifetime to each other.
Remember yours? In sickness and in health, in the good times and bad, for richer or poorer… The commitments you made then are for moments like right now. Revive those commitments during this time. You don’t need an expensive, elaborate, “official,” vow renewal ceremony to reestablish the commitments you made to each other at your wedding. You just need a heart that’s willing to submit to the same commitments you’ve already made.
Action: Read this out loud to each other: I reach out in love and choose to share my life with you. I you promise always to give you my expression of ever-growing love, I will comfort you, be sensitive to you needs, express my feelings with you, listen to you, put my trust in you, and forsaking all others, take you to be my (wife/husband), to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer, or poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until death separates us. I do… again. Deuteronomy 23:21-23
A New Season
“It’s going to be great! We’ll never fight. Have sex all the time. Go on great vacations, and have a perfect life together.” That’s only “real” on reality TV. Seasons change. There are great times, difficult times, hard times, easy times, lean times, prosperous times, and coronavirus times.
Anna and I have gone through them all, with the current bringing a whole new set of challenges: trying to lead a church on the internets, while she’s pregnant, and we’re self-quarantined with wild animals (Zion + Canaan). Yet in every season we’ve gone through, there’s one truth that remains: The way we embrace a season determines how we face a season. If we embrace with frustration, stress, and fear, we’ll face it with the same attributes at war with each other. But when we’ve determined to embrace a season with faith, hope, grace, and love, we’ve seen God harvest those throughout. Embrace with faith. Embrace with grace. Embrace with hope.
Action: Come up with three Biblical truths you’re going to embrace during this season. Write them down. Face this season with those as your battle cry together! Isaiah 43:1-2
Praying for you all and believing God will strengthen you during this time!
Want more? Here’s a couple messages I preaching on marriage in February.