Never being married or having any children before, Bruce compared being a step-dad and new husband to being a brand new student driver and getting out onto Highways 59 and 610 (the third busiest highway interchange in the nation) in Houston and being told, “Just drive, or they’ll mow you over!”
I must confess, even though I am ashamed to, that I had such an attitude of harshness during the first three months of our marriage. It was really tough, those first three months, and on into the first three years. But especially the first three months. I held the thought in the back of my mind that I’ve already been through one divorce; I was independent, didn’t need to be married and that I could do it again and survive just fine.
I want to talk to you about vows and what they mean. I think that in our society today we take them too lightly, without really understanding what it is that we are committing. We are truly making a covenant with each other as husband and wife. We are not entering into some sort of a business contract with a thirty-day notice clause! When the Lord makes a covenant with us, it is an unending promise. He is committed to us through thick and thin. In our marriage vows, we need to understand we are promising that also. My husband has been truly committed to me that way, and taught me that no matter how I behaved, he was going to love me anyway! He was never leaving. He said divorce was not a word that we were going to use in our marriage. When he explained this to me, it was as though a light bulb went off in my head. I’d always thought that divorce was a viable option. My parents were divorced, and I’d been divorced. In my mind I had strangely conjured up the thought that somehow marriage and divorce were intertwined! How crazy is that! …
When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom. Proverbs 11:2 NIV