Incorporating Hope in my Ministry Marriage Series: Hope in the Hard                    

When my husband and I got married we chose as our wedding theme Christ, Our Solid Rock. We knew God had called us to serve Him and His church together and we were convinced that He would be the One who had to be our firm foundation if we were going to persevere in marriage and ministry life. 

I grew up in farming country in Michigan and enjoyed walking in the laneway between the fields surrounding our house. At the end of the lane was a stand of trees, the edge of which housed an old, upturned well cistern laid with stones. Before we were engaged my husband and I would try to get quiet moments away from my eager teenaged siblings by walking down this lane.

One day, totally unsuspected by me, we left for a walk, my husband with a ring tucked in his pocket. When he stretched out and offered his hand to help me onto the cistern so we could look at the fields and chat, he immediately dropped on one knee and pulled out the ring with the rock in it that I still wear to remind us of our commitment to our God and to each other.

We took an already-loosened rock from that cistern as a reminder of our relationship and brought it with us to our new home. It was a symbol to us of the One who had brought us together and Who would be our One Constant as we went through our life together. To carry on the tradition, we have taken a rock from every place we’ve lived since then as testimony of His faithfulness to us throughout the years.

It will be twenty-one years from this month that we promised to stand firm on the Solid Rock of Christ, knowing that He alone could keep us faithful to Him and to one another.

Just because that has proved true doesn’t mean that there weren’t times when we were tempted to doubt and lose hope. Life is hard. Ministry is hard. Marriage is hard. But there is hope in the hard.

When we sang the words to that great old hymn “The Solid Rock” on our wedding day, we had no idea of the things in our lives that would feel harder than that Rock, but He has always been trustworthy and more sure and solid than anything we have experienced.

When all around my soul gives way

When I married my man, I crossed a country border. Six months later we crossed back over that border and over many state lines. We landed three days drive away from the family with whom I had always been close to begin his seminary education.

As much as we loved our new home and God provided a wonderful church family and friends, we were still newlyweds trying to meld two single people’s mindsets and lifestyles from two very different family systems and country cultures into one. 

I felt like things around my soul were giving way as I realized I was now an adult, that it was time for me to separate from my family and make a new life and family with my new husband. The emotional turmoil we wrestle with as women on this separation is complicated, and it became further complicated for both of us when barely six months into our marriage, only a few months after my husband began his seminary education, we received news that his father had left his mother.

Needless to say, again we felt that all around our souls was giving way. My husband had to wrestle with many questions about who he was and who his parents were and how all of this reconciled with what they’d taught him over the years.

This event also placed us in the position of caring for his mom who was now abandoned, in need of our care, and living thousands of miles away from us. Hard.

But…HOPE.

Looking back, I know God sustained. That though it felt like everything around us was giving way, we could see how facing these things early on in our marriage taught us to stand back-to- back and face the world and its challenges together, to support and love one another patiently and always . . . to put our Hope in the One who would never disappoint us. Truly, even “when all around my soul gives way, He, then, is all my hope and stay.”

I dare not trust the sweetest frame

With four years of seminary completed we were deemed prepared for ministry life in our first pastorate in what is called the “Cottage Country” of Northern Ontario, Canada. Excited to now be only one day’s drive away from my family and feeling better to be much closer in order to care for my mother-in-law, we entered our first church with the enthusiasm and naivety of youth.

We jumped in with both feet, putting our whole hearts and souls into loving our people, into building relationships and planning for the future of our family and our church.

Then suddenly those who we counted as friends began to do things that didn’t make sense and left us feeling betrayed and hurt. Relationships got more complicated and eventually we were living in an environment that felt like smoke and mirrors; we were never sure whom we could trust or what was real and what wasn’t.

We felt despair at times that we could do anything to help the church untangle the mess of broken relationships and history of conflict that had been building for years. We were caught in the middle of the battle and had to find ways to retreat and pick the shrapnel out of our wounded hearts.

We learned not to “trust the sweetest frame but to wholly lean on Jesus’ name.” He never entrusted Himself to any man because He knew what was in the heart of man (see John 2:24-25). We felt like we knew what truly was in man a bit better now too. In Him was hope, not in our ministry or relationships and on Him we would need to lean. Him. Alone.

When darkness veils His lovely face

And yet . . . darkness still swooped in with a vengeance. The strain of the circumstances left my husband under a cloud of anxiety and depression that sometimes left him curled up on the bed trying to make sense out of what was going on around us.

As the mess began to untangle bit by bit, and he was assured by others that he wasn’t responsible for what was happening despite how much others were seeking to make it about him, we began to see the light at the end of the tunnel. And God gave hope and healing.

We were able to leave the church with 95 percent support and feel God’s blessing in moving forward to a new place of ministry.

We rested “in His unchanging grace.” He carried us through.

Dressed in His righteousness alone

And He continues to do so. Since then God has allowed other challenges to come our way: children who struggle with anxieties and depression, church trials and struggles which have led to more depression and anxiety and stress; my mother-in-law’s deteriorating mental and physical health and the heavy responsibility of caring for her.

Many times we have broken covenant with one another as we have reacted in anger or closed ourselves off from each other. Other times, when the other has been unable to give what we have needed, we have been selfish and blamed our spouse for not being who we wanted him or her to be.

We have raised our voices at our children or lacked compassion or were irritated and short with each other. We have failed each other.

But God has never failed us. And He never will. We wear His righteousness. “Faultless” we will “stand before the throne.”

Truly, on Christ the Solid Rock we will stand. All other ground is sinking sand.

Ministry marriage is hard, but there is always hope in the hard when you stand on the Rock Who is Higher and Harder.

God, help our ministry marriages to reflect our hope in You.

The Solid Rock

by Edward Mote

My hope is built on nothing less

Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness;

I dare not trust the sweetest frame,

But wholly lean on Jesus’ name.

 

Refrain:

On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand;

All other ground is sinking sand,

All other ground is sinking sand.

 

When darkness veils His lovely face,

I rest on His unchanging grace;

In every high and stormy gale,

My anchor holds within the veil.

 

His oath, His covenant, His blood

Support me in the whelming flood;

When all around my soul gives way,

He then is all my hope and stay.

 

When He shall come with trumpet sound,

Oh, may I then in Him be found;

Dressed in His righteousness alone,

Faultless to stand before the throne.