Transcript
I met Luella in college. She was a returning student. I was there for freshman orientation and I stood behind her in the lunch line. For me, it was love at first sight. For Luella, it was first sight. It took me a while before she was willing to go out with me, but she enjoyed being with me and our relationship began.
What We Did Not Know About Sin
Although we did an awful lot of talking about our backgrounds and whatnot, the impact of sin in our hearts and its impact on relationships, we just did not know. Probably the biggest struggle in our marriage -- it almost destroyed our marriage -- was my own anger.
I think that anger was a product of my desire for control, my desire to have things work the way I want them to work. I'm very project-oriented. I have a plan for every day. I became just a very, very angry man. It was the range from low-level irritation about things that don't make any difference whatsoever because they were different or unexpected, all the way to rage, abusive talk, threatening behavior.
I wasn't physically abusive, but if you lived with me, you would think, "If this continues, that's going to be the thing will happen next. Luella was afraid of where it was going to go and literally, had planned to escape -- not to divorce me, but just to try to break the cycle of evil.
Where Healing Began
Healing began one evening where I just said to Luella, "I know that you have been trying to talk to me about my anger and I've been unwilling to listen and unwilling to hear. I can honestly say for the first time, I want to hear what you have to say to me." She started out by telling me that she loved me, which I thought was an amazing, gracious thing to say, given what I'd put her through; and then she talked for two hours. The curtains ripped down.
I saw myself with accuracy and the next several months were incredibly painful because I saw that anger everywhere I looked. But I want to say this, that that pain was the pain of grace because God was giving me sight so I couldn't make friends with that anger any longer.
Marriage sits in the middle of the world's most important incomplete process -- sanctification. In my way of thinking, wouldn't it be great if God would have got us fully sanctified first because my goal for marriage is that it would be comfortable. God's goal for marriage is that it would be transformational.
Placetas, Cuba, and the Issue of Time
For example, for us, one of the big issues was time. Luella was raised in Placetas, Cuba. If you go on a Caribbean vacation, you go there because time slows down. It's just chill. You love that. I was raised by a man who thought the sole litmus test of the value of a human being was punctuality. Time was everything.
Now, you can hate those differences and demand your way or you can say, "There's a sovereign God who wrote our stories and wrote it together, and He means for us to benefit from our differences. I see the world in ways I wouldn't have seen it without Luella. The fruit of that is we're approaching our 50th anniversary. We look back on those early days. It's almost like we're watching a different couple because the culture is so different than the one that we have now.
And so, I would say to young Christian couples as they're approaching marriage, I have huge, huge optimism for you. You're going to hit bumpy roads. You're going to know way more than you know now, but a God of grace goes with you and what His word calls you to is the stuff of a beautiful relationship.
