I reckon I could say it all started when Jeremy asked me to be his girlfriend on June 7, 2008.
We got engaged on November 24, 2008.
We exchanged vows in front of our loved ones on August 1, 2009. It was a perfect day, a day I’ll never forget.
December 17, 2012 is the day we decided to get a divorce.
The discussion started over something so silly that just about anyone would laugh. A few days prior, we got into a full-blown argument over video games. Yes, video games. And the silly part? It was all while we were on a date. Some date that turned out to be!
We went to bed angry at one another, and the next day I sat down with Jeremy and told him we needed to talk this thing out. Our “talking it out” turned into three hours of very raw, tough, sometimes hurtful conversation. It was revealed, by both of us, that we weren’t as happy as we had thought. The more we talked, the worse things seemed to get. After three hours, we finally agreed that taking time away from the team would be best so we could figure things out in our marriage. There’s a lot of junk that needs settling. We shared with our team that we’d be leaving for a few days to work on our marriage. We shared a few details and asked them to pray for us.
We nervously booked a hotel in Nha Trang, eager, scared, and anxious to find out what these next days would hold.
The day arrived. We packed our bags and headed to town. We stopped at a little coffee shop for lunch where Jeremy also surprised me with German chocolate brownie cake and the Song of Solomon. We prayed and read the Word together in the coffee shop, though stopped a little short for fear of being questioned (it’s illegal to be a Christian openly in Vietnam). We took a taxi to our hotel where the “real” conversation was to start.
We finished our study and then prayed. We talked a little more about the things we had discussed the day(s) before. These things aren’t pretty. Our marriage is a wreck. I’m not going to lie, we have a lot of crap to work out. A lot. We didn’t know how bad it was until we started being honest with each other.
Communication is key. Be honest!
Here is what we discovered: we have not set a good foundation in our marriage. Yes, we love Christ, but we have discovered, unfortunately, that we have let Him slip from being the center of our marriage. That is something that technically started when we were dating, and it’s just been a downward spiral. We’re both selfish, and for whatever reason we’re the most selfish towards the other. We aren’t getting filled in the way(s) we need (our love languages). We care more about what other people think than we do about just doing what we need for the sake of our marriage. And we let our pride get in the way too often.
Obviously there’s more, but those are the big things. Our biggest upset is that our foundation isn’t centered on the right One.
After talking through everything and praying, we decided that the best option for us was to get a divorce. There’s no other way around this. We cannot save our marriage in its current state. So we’re done. It’s over.
We’re getting a divorce. It’s time to say “goodbye” to what we’ve shared for the past 3 ½ years and move on. It’s going to be a tough road, goodness knows, but we can’t do this anymore.
We’re divorcing each other from our old marriage and creating a new marriage. On December 17th we made a new commitment to one another, a new covenant. We re-centered our focus on the One it’s supposed to be on in the first place. We have committed ourselves to selflessness and we are to encourage, uplift, respect, and love one another even when we don’t want to. I am committing myself to respecting Jeremy, even when he doesn’t deserve it. He is committing himself to loving me, even when I am unlovable.
We want to change the norm. In most marriages nowadays, people would give up at this point and literally call it quits. We want to prove that it is possible to hold true to the vows we have made to one another. We are going to stick this out through “the good times and bad”. It’s not always easy, but that’s the beautiful part: through these hard times is when we grow the most. It’s not fun right now, but the beauty that will come out the end of this will be all worth it.
I’m so excited about our new marriage I can hardly stand it. I am excited about being Jeremy’s helper. I’m excited about serving him with a servant’s heart. I’m excited about what our marriage will look like even 6 months from now because of this new commitment we have made, and even moreso 20 years from now! I’m excited about the depth of our love and how much it will grow. And most of all, I’m excited about serving Christ whole-heartedly, even on the remainder of this trip and throughout the rest of our lives. With Him as our foundation, our marriage can be everything I always dreamed it would be.
