Winding Down in the Fire

(this is a repost)

The house is quiet (except for the dryer with the nap blankets for tomorrow -see previous post entitled, "Crystals" all over the wash load), now it's time to wind down with a nice quiet devotional book. So I grab "Moments Together for Couples" by Dennis and Barbara Rainey. Jeoff is working on something on the computer in the other room so our minds are not exactly in sync at the time. But I have this picture in my head of a wonderful, peaceful time of devotion, intimate discussion, and prayer.

After a long long weekend and a long day for both of us, we were in a good position for a test. After a few minutes, we nestle closely and begin reading the scripture and accompanying devotional text. It's encouraging and reassuring, we feel good and we have hope.

Then come the questions at the end that challenge us to, what? Apply what we just heard.

The topic for the day, July 30, is Mid-Faith Crisis. The question asks us to share a time that we experienced our own mid-faith crisis. Now, we could have shared some surface, "loddy-doddy" story to get the question answered but shifting to the place of vulnerability takes shaking off all of the junk of the day and getting past the stuff that's blocking the doorway to the intimacy that we both so desire.

So before we got there, we went through a non-peaceful exchange that initially resulted in something on the other end of the spectrum from what we read the devotional for.

That probably sounds horrible to some but hey that's what we have to go through sometimes to get past the flesh, kill it and experience true intimacy.

After that was over we were made all the better for it. That was God's purpose in the test.

Someone told us once that God doesn't place us in marriage to make us happy, but to make us holy!

If we had chosen the surface, "loddy-doddy" story to end out the night, we would have had an uneventful night with lots and lots of sleep, but we had a test to take and some more sharpening that had to be done. More refiner's fire!