What is your vision for our marriage and life together. HDIFAMA?

Dear LORD:

Thank you so much for your guidance and support with Patti today on the phone. That was so great! It is such a covering for us to have Patti give us her input about where we should go in the Retrouvaille community at this point. Be with us as we attend Retrouvaille CORE next week. Help us to see clearly what is the situation in that community and if it your will for us to be a part of that group. If not, please show us a way to be involved in Retrouvaille without being so involved in the Catholic Church. Amen!

MDDL:

Your MEQ today was the wonderful conversation we had after your little conflict with Jeanae and the way we worked through that. It was great!

My vision for our relationship is that it be a testament to the work of the Spirit in our lives, and that the institution of Christian marriage can be a vital and living thing even in this day and age. Marriage is under attack. We all know that. Between the media and the other forces tearing it down as well as the liberal agenda to establish gay and lesbian marriage, the whole idea of marriage is becoming threatened. I even heard a piece on NPR recently someone seriously suggested abolishing the institution altogether. After all, the vast majority of children in black communities have no idea what marriage is all about, and Latinos are not much better.

I want for us to be so strong in our marriage that people seek us out to ask us how we do it. They come to us. We don't have to go to them. Our reputation as a married couple is that strong.

There is a movie that illustrates this very well. The name of this movie is In Good Company. Dennis Quaid plays a father and husband in a family where Scarlett Johansson is the daughter. She is going off to college. He is working for a sports magazine which is taken over by a big conglomerate, and in the process his job is threatened. A much younger man (actually his daughter's age) is brought in to be his boss. The Dennis Quaid character is demoted.

In the process, he gets to know his new boss very well (played brilliantly by Topher Grace). The boss character is from a broken home, typical for our day and age. He is enchanted when he comes over to the home of Dennis Quaid for dinner. He can't believe it that someone has actually pulled this off.

I won't give away too much of the plot, as you will undoubtedly want to see this film. It is one of the most inspiring and family promoting Hollywood movies in the past few decades. Suffice it to say, when the boss character is asked derisively by one of his cohorts "Do you want to end up like him?" (referring to Dennis Quaid), he turns to him, turns back and says "Yeah, that would be fine with me." He was so inspired and challenged (in a good way) by the simple family life of this very ordinary man that he was willing to give up everything: His job, his fortune, his career, to throw in his lot with him.

That's what I want for people to do with us. See in us something so extraordinary that they are attracted by it. To the point where they would say in response to the question "Would you want to end up like Jeff and Ruth Browning?": "Yeah, that would be fine with me."

And I want that to be a natural outgrowth of the life we live. Not that it will not require work and dedication. Not that it will be without challenges and difficulties. Not that we will not have pain. I know we will. But I am so committed and dedicated to this marriage we share that I will do whatever it takes to make that happen. I want that so badly.

The way I feel about my answer is hopeful. I have used this example before (although we have not prohibited the reuse of an example in a letter yet: only in the reflection part of the dialog, so hopefully this is OK.) But a shared experience would be when you called me from Baton Rouge. I was so hopeful after that call. I was like: This could be it! This could be the end of this struggle. This could be the beginning of something new! My feeling of hopefulness is a 10 for sure. Maybe more than a 10. It is a bright, peachy orange of a gorgeous sunset. With pink highlights reflecting off the clouds.

I am desperately and deeply in love with you. You are the love of my life, and you always will be.

Love,
Me