With our oldest daughter’s wedding a week away marriage has been on my mind. I’ve been married twenty-three years and I’m still not good at it all the time. Last week while cleaning out the garage, Scott and I got in a fight. He insisted on throwing stuff away that I wanted to donate. I said he was wasteful. He called me rebellious. Like the cherry on a sundae that makes you sick, I topped our fight off by calling him a donkey. Actually the rear end of a donkey and I didn’t use such nice terms. 

Later on, Scott told me he loves how passionate I am. He then informed our older kids what I’d called him and they gleefully teased me about my “garage mouth.” While it gave my family a good laugh, I found the whole thing discouraging. I’d believed I was beyond name calling in our marriage until that moment in the garage, and I thought God had cleaned all the curse words out of me. 

Apparently not.      

After our garage blowout we drove to the dump together. Once a year we do a dump date and these dates have always been fun. But driving to the dump last week we didn’t speak to each other at all.  

After emptying the truck at the dump, Scott asked if I’d eat lunch with him at one of our favorite little out of the way places. A tiny Mexican restaurant in Marysville called Cisco’s. Cisco’s wasn’t open yet when we arrived so we tooled downtown to a thrift store to kill time, both of us hitting the bookshelves still hardly speaking. 

There tucked between the novels was a Gary Smalley marriage book. I picked it up and opened to a marked page. “Will you trust your husband to me?” The Lord said to Gary Smalley’s wife who’d written this particular chapter. “Nagging and anger don’t work. Wait for me to change your husband.” This was God’s message to Mrs. Smalley. And God’s little message to me. God’s big message upon finding the Smalley book was this, “You still need my grace to save your marriage.”

Somewhere along the line I’d begun thinking our marriage was secure because we were Christians. I’d made an assumption and we all know about assumptions.

I paid a dollar for the Smalley book and humbly carried it home with me. It was Gary’s Smalley’s ministry that helped our marriage hang in there years ago when neither of us knew the Lord yet and we had a marriage on the verge of sinking. We’d come by Smalley’s teaching randomly. I can’t even remember how we ended up with the Smalley books and VHS tapes. But there was nothing random about those books and tapes showing up in our lives. God had placed them in our hands right when we needed them to save us just like he put the Smalley devotion on that thrift store shelf for me to discover last week. And a week from today, by His grace, Scott and I will dance at our daughter’s wedding to the song, Stand By Me. Our daughter asked everyone coming to write down a song she could play at the reception for them to dance to. Stand By Me has it’s own special story in our love story. Here’s the quick version: Scott and I had been broken up for nine months. He lived in Reno and I lived in Chico. Out of the blue, Scott called my college apartment, leaving a message with one of my roommates. I knew Scott meant business because I’d told him nearly a year before when he broke it off with me not to call unless he wanted to get married. 

After nine months apart his phone call felt more like an arrow through my heart than anything else. I didn’t know God very well in those days, but I said to Him, “If you want me to marry Scott please play our song, Stand By Me.” I was in my car driving home to my apartment and only had time enough to hear two songs when I said this to God. Neither of those radio songs was Stand By Me. 

With tears on my cheeks, I parked my car and walked up the stairs to my Chico apartment thinking it was over. I believed God didn’t want me to marry Scott. But when I opened my apartment door the music of Stand By Me rolled out and nearly swept me off my feet. My roommate was watching the movie Stand By Me and the theme song was playing in our living room. A week after that, Scott and I were back together and engaged to be married.         

A marriage is a living thing. Like any kind of living thing it must grow and change to thrive. Below I’ve linked a new version of the song Stand By Me. This version really speaks to me. I hope it speaks to you as well.