When my wife Sarah and I had been dating for about a year we got into a pretty big fight.
I had a jealousy issue back then in the fall of 2003, and though I loved my wife whom I was dating, I had trust issues. I had been in previous relationships amidst a party lifestyle where I had been lied to and cheated on. I had done my fair share of lying in those relationships myself, and if you count pornography as cheating I certainly did my fair share.
This fight was another of many broken records. I was fighting again, trying to test and prove whether Sarah was being honest and faithful to me as her boyfriend or not. She was devastated by my mistrust and adamant about loving me and being faithful to me and honest with me. She started crying amidst the fight, and yelled at me, saying, “Just believe that I really do love you! And stop testing my love for you!”
I shouted back, “fine!” I walked away from her quickly and almost ran to the drawer in my nightstand, where there was a little box with a diamond ring in it. I grabbed the box.
I had plans in my mind that I’d propose to Sarah in a beautiful, outdoor gazebo in the winter. We were about to go on vacation with my parents to New England. We’d attempt our best to stay pure and sleep in separate beds, sharing a hotel room with my folks, even though my folks didn’t care and thought our Christian convictions were weird. We’d end up in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. This was one of my favorite cities. I wanted to propose to Sarah in a white gazebo right in the middle of downtown Portsmouth at the end of some sort of beautiful, romantic dinner and evening together.
I threw out all of those plans at this moment. I had the box in my hand, I ran over to my currently crying, irritated, and upset girlfriend. I said emphatically to her, “I won’t test your love any more, marry me!”
Sarah’s tears of anger and sadness turned quickly over into tears of joy as she said yes. We embraced and kissed one another on the dirty, unswept floor right there in my studio apartment in Kent, Ohio.
I was so grateful that Sarah’s disposition towards me shifted! She went from being angry, untrusting, and broken, to being joyful, trusting, and delighted in that moment.
And some of us think that God is angry with us. Some of us think that God would never trust us. Some of us feel broken beyond repair. We’ve made too many mistakes to ever think it would be possible to be forgiven. We’re currently struggling with way too much to ever even begin to believe that God could love us.
But God wants to offer us His joy!
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