Our Journey: Part 2

Here is part two! This one is a long, are you ready!?

Part 2: Preparation

In the fall of 2008 I moved from Sacramento, CA to do Anthem School of Ministry at the Church of Living Water in Olympia, WA. At the same time Zach was moving from Dover, OH to Olympia to do Anthem as well.

Anthem at Living Water is a leadership development program designed to empower and instruct young adults who are passionate about following Jesus and pursuing lives of meaning and inistry. It is a full-time 9-18 month program.

God healed A LOT of things in me during my first year of Anthem. One of them was my relationship with my dad. The deeper I dove into the word and grace of Jesus, the more apparent the brokenness of my relationship with my dad was. A daughter/father relationship affects so many other important things in a girl’s life, ie: our view of God the Father, our future marriage/husband, etc. Because of the weight of this relationship, it seems like this was God’s first order of business for me.

We had a weekly class with Pastor Tim Wimberly (the director of Anthem at that time) called Relationships class. In this class we addressed how to handle all relationships (parent/child, siblings, friends, romantic, etc) in a Godly way. Each student also got the opportunity to address the ungodly believes in their life. This usually included lots of vulnerability, secrets of the past you never shared with anyone, tears, support from your classmates, and prayer.

My turn came around and I was anxious. I thought God was going to bring up a bad relationship I had with a boy right out of high school, but, that wasn’t it. He brought up my relationship with my dad. I explained some back ground information to everyone like I did in Part 1 to you. In the middle of this time, Pastor Tim looked across the two tables in between us and stared into my
soul and said:

“Aimee, I’m going to be your dad for a minute here. Are you okay with that?”
“Yes.”
“And I have a question for you; will you forgive me?”

And with that I BURST into tears. 19 years of hurt and pain came bubbling to the surface. I wanted to forgive, but I had no idea how to. Forgiveness seemed like a huge mountain in front of me—boasting in how hard it’d be to climb.

From that point on Pastor Tim walked me through the next steps of forgiving my dad. He
gave me two weeks to write a letter to my dad. It was to include everything I always wanted to say, but never did. All of those feelings that I kept bottled up inside for too many years. I was overwhelmed with this task and was not sure when and where I’d have the inspiration to write this emotional letter. One rainy morning God beckoned me down to Capitol Lake. I sat in my car and just spent some time alone with the Lord. I felt like it was time to write the letter. After about an hour or two it was done—all over a shoe box, the backs of newsletters, and a paper bag pulled from my trunk.

I expressed the hurt and pain of the divorce. I expressed all of the stuffed feelings; how I felt so alone, unvalued, and lost in the crowd. How I felt like he didn’t know how to take care of me. How I felt so bitter that all of this happened. I didn’t leave one thing out.

I went over the letter with Pastor Tim. I had not included anything about asking my dad for forgiveness for things I had done wrong. After some advice on this and revisions, it was finished. I took the next leap of faith and asked my dad to come to Washington from Sacramento. In April 2009 my dad came and spent a couple of days with me. It was a BREAKTHROUGH kind of a weekend!

That Sunday after church we sat in Pastor Tim’s office and I read the letter to my dad. It was one of the hardest things I have ever done. I had never told my dad my true feelings. About a quarter of the way through the letter I started tearing up and stopped reading it because it was too difficult. My dad lifted my chin up and looked in my eyes and said something I’ll never forget, "Aimee, nothing you say will ever change the way I love you.” That moment changed my life and relationship with him and the Lord forever. I had this assurance and confidence that my daddy and my heavenly Father loved me no matter what. How freeing—a love not conditioned on “being good.”

I read the rest of the letter and the cat was out of the bag. My dad knew my deepest feelings about everything. I was scared at first, but in the end I was set free! After I was finished with the letter I apologized for things I had done and said that were wrong. He forgave me. He asked for forgiveness too, and I forgave him. When we left that office the doors were closed on the bitterness and strongholds that had been rooted in me for so long. Halleluiah!

I believe that the healing of this relationship was the biggest preparation of my heart for Zach. Do you want to know if a girl is ready to get married? Ask her about her relationship with her dad. It is such a crucial part of the process of preparing for marriage. If you have brokenness with your dad and don’t resolve it, the issues and hurt and pain just get drug into your relationship with your spouse. This will stunt your marriage. God wants your marriage to be fulfilling, whole, and not filtered through the lens of the past.

Here are some other things Zach and I did to prepare for marriage:

1. Submit your relationship to a leader/pastor in your life right away.

We were in Anthem when our relationship started to bloom, so this was just part of the guidelines for us. I am SO grateful that we were forced to do this, though, because we probably wouldn’t have submitted our relationship to our leaders the way we did if we didn’t have to. I recall so many painful meetings where we had to confess to our leaders that we had messed up. At the time it really sucked, but it was so healthy. Even if you’re far down the road in your relationship, it is never too early or too late to submit yourselves to someone you trust. This just means having the initial conversation with the leader and committing to meet with them on a regular basis.

2. Set boundaries, write them down, give them to someone to keep you accountable.

Let’s be honest, no one wants to do this. When you’re in love with someone the thought of sex is on the brain a lot! It is so hard to abstain! But, we did it, and so can you. You cannot do it alone, though. Of course, your boundaries will change as your relationship grows just like ours did, but, at each stage of our relationship, we set boundaries that two leaders were aware of. For example, we didn’t spend time at each other’s houses alone. If we were alone, we were in the car going somewhere (not parking!) or in public. The other person went
home when everyone in the house we were at went to bed. You need boundaries to
keep you from the slippery slope of doing more than you want to do. It is worth
it. Guys need to lead in this area and show girls that purity is a priority. So
guys, get that paper and pen out, sit down with your girl, and set the
guidelines.

3. Read a book together

There are countless premarital books out there for engaged folks, but one that we read that was
very beneficial is Saving Your Marriage Before it Starts by Dr. Les & Leslie Parrott. It included a work book for each of us that prompted really good discussions that might not have otherwise happened.

4. Premarital Counseling

Once we got engaged we met with one of our pastors for premarital counseling a handful of
times before we got married and then a handful after, too. Premarital counseling is for everyone. No matter if you’re doing great or you really need help; God will use this time to bring up topics that need to be talked about prior to marriage. Some that you might be afraid to bring up or don’t know how to bring up on your own. It’s a great way for a third party to facilitate productive, uncharted conversations.

5. Learn eachother's love languages

Most are familiar with the book The 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman where he proposes 5 different love languages for men & women: physical touch, acts of service, gifts, quality time, and
words of affirmation. This helped Zach and I so much in learning how to make
the other feel loved! Most of us give love how we receive love, but this fails
sometimes because not everyone feels loved by the same things.

6. Find a church, get connected, servce, and stay connected.

7. Surround yourself with people you want to be like

You can’t surround yourself with healthy people if you don’t know any! This is why step 6 is so important. A healthy church is a good place to find some Godly people to be around. We found pastors and people that we wanted to be like, that we admired, and that had what we wanted and we pursued them. We got together with them on a regular basis for dinner, we babysat their kids,
and we truly invited them to be a part of our relationship by asking them questions, asking for their true opinion, asking them how they did it. We built relationship with them. When crap hits the fan, their houses are where we find ourselves. If you don’t do anything else, do this one.

8. Spill it all

One day Zach brought up the subject of our pasts and how he wanted to share everything with me about him and vice versa. I was intimidated and nervous by this conversation! In our 2nd year of Anthem, towards the end, there came a point in our relationship where we were both ready for this to happen, though. We went out to a park for a couple of hours for uninterrupted conversation. The mission: to tell each other about everyone we had ever been physically/emotionally involved with. The reason: I did not want any guy from my past to know more about me than my future husband and Zach did not want any girl to know more about him than me. What a beautiful thing. We started from our first kiss and everything in between. There were some laughs about stupid situations from long ago and there were some tears about things we deeply regretted. Telling Zach about how I gave myself away and did not wait for him was really, really painful. Hearing about how he gave himself away to someone else was really, really painful, too. But, there was healing in bringing it to the light. There was an even deeper intimacy as we trusted each other with the deepest things in our lives. There was nothing to hide and the revelation of being loved even in our darkest mistakes was an amazing thing.

Disclaimer: This is a heavy thing to do and I do not recommend it Flippantly. Zach and I were giving our hearts away to eachother in these moments, letting eachother into the deepest parts of lives. Until you KNOW you are ready for this, you need to guard your heart. Really pray about taking this step before you do. Doing this prematurely or without the notion of a lifelong commitment coming (marriage) would be a big mistake.

Part three will be coming your way tomorrow!