Let's Get Real About Marriage

Ashley

I remember as a kid my dad would hold my thumb and my brother’s thumb and say,

“Okay, try and get your thumb out of my grasp. My brother and I would pull, pry, and try to maneuver a way to get our thumbs out of my dad’s firm grip. When we would finally give up he would say, “That’s what It’s like with Jesus. He never, ever lets you go. No matter what, He always holds you by the hand and there is nothing you can do to escape His love.”

Fast forward about fifteen years. Heading into my early twenties I was seeking every toxic relationship I could put myself into and making choices that drew me farther and farther away from the Lord. I constantly wondered, Okay is this the decision that will make Him turn His back on me? Is this the final straw of my relationship with Him? During those moments, I would remember back to when my dad would give us the analogy of the Lord’s grasp on our lives. I knew that no matter how far I strayed there was nothing I could do or say that would make Him love me less or reject my return to Him. I had been rooted in Christ.

I was four-years-old when I gave my life to Christ. It was with my dad over breakfast at the dining room table. I grew up in a Christian household with parents who loved each other and set examples for my brother and me of what it meant to have a marriage and household with Christ as the center. We were in church every Sunday, no excuses. It was a priority. It’s where I grew. It’s the place that helped raise me. It was and still is my church family that has held me accountable in all years of my life. Even in my darkest of years I was in church. Even if it meant bringing whatever loser of the month I was dating that week. I never missed church. I can say that church has been my blessing in not just my marriage, but in my kids’ lives as well.

I believe it was my strong roots that were planted when I was young that are what eventually brought me back to Christ. I think it was my roots that were planted that helped save me from the life I was living before meeting my husband. And I think it was my roots in Christ that had us firmly planted in Christ when our lives turned upside-down a year into marriage.

I don’t know where I would be had I not gave my life to the Lord. It makes me shudder at the thought of it.

I remember in the first couple days of my husband battling the monster of depression and anxiety that my first instinct was to cry out to God. I remember hiding in my closet, laying in the fetal position, crying out to God. That was one of the moments I knew my life had changed. Instead of crying out to God, “Why me?” I was turning to the Lord and crying out for help. I remember that night I felt God wrapping his arms around me and telling me He was going to carry me, but it was going to be a long journey. Over the next months that turned into years my love story with Christ began. I had been rooted in Christ, but as time went on I fell more and more in love with my Savior. As the pain grew, my faith grew. As my husband and I saw darker and darker days, I clung to God more with every fiber of my being.

As I write, I am very aware of how it might sit with someone who doesn’t have those roots. Or someone who has lost a family member, someone who has seen more hurt and loss that’s incomprehensible. Those who might be angry toward God, hurt and with a cry of, “Why God? Why me?”

We have previously written on what depression looked like and the toll it has taken, but absent from those writings is what precisely helped us navigate those waters:

• Our church. We fell into the love, comfort, and encouragement from our church family. We didn’t miss a Sunday no matter what life looked like that day. Sometimes we barely made it through the doors, but it was there that we could breathe, pray, and be with people who not only loved us, but loved the Lord.
• We had community. We had friends who would call, text, come over on a regular basis to find out how we were doing. They would give me a break, they would take our kids, they would pray for us. They held us up when we felt like we couldn’t go on. Those people are still our people. They are our community who we walk with in the good times and the community that walks with us in the dark times.
• We reached out for help. We got into counseling, we met with different people—ones who had experienced what we were going through. Professional help is what saved us and I would tell anyone on the verge of asking for help or wondering if they might need it to reach out.
• We turned to Christ. We climbed up into His arms where he has been carrying us ever since. We started praising Him in the hard times. He taught me what it is to be a child of God. A lost girl in need of a Savior. He taught me that it is so much better to go through life with Christ than without.

I was rooted with Christ at a young age. My roots have been trampled, un-watered, left to dry at different points in my life. But it’s in those times that Christ took hold of me and told me He would never let me go, no matter how hard I tried to pull or pry away from Him. I have fallen in love with my Lord and the past five years have been a love story between Him and myself that I wouldn’t change a day or a second for.

 

Ashton

Two years ago, we took down a bunch of trees at our house to help open up the view a bit. In total, we took down about 35 very large, very old evergreen trees. It took a big crew, a crane, and some robotic-looking machine that was straight out of a science fiction movie. At the same time two of our next-door neighbors hired the same crew at the same time to also open up their yards. We were very happy with the result except for one part. The logging crew did not take out stumps or a few of the trees that we had asked. This was not the most approachable group of people, but I did politely voice my concern and there was a passing mention of the “root system.” Honestly, it was 80 degrees and I took that as a lazy excuse not to finish the job that I had paid good money for.  But again, not the crew you really want to mess with so I let it go.

As usual my foot ended up in my mouth a few months ago. This tends to happen when I believe I have some level of knowledge that an expert would on a particular topic. Ashley and I noticed lots of swaying in the trees and branches falling more than expected through the summer, so we hired an arborist to come ensure that the remaining trees were not going to come crashing through our bedrooms. We have toddlers and very much cherish what little amount of sleep we get.

The arborist pulled up driving a Prius and parked behind my two very large vehicles. I felt as if this meeting was going to go south in a hurry. Fortunately, it was the opposite. We walked around our home and he inspected each tree. We started in the front and worked our way to the back. Secretly, I was hoping he was going to tell me that they were all dangerous and they needed to be removed. I’d then have the excuse to get more daylight back there, and less yard clean up after a wind storm.

The kind arborist walked around, looking at each tree from bottom to top. He was very methodical and always started at the bottom. He wanted to ensure that the base of the tree was healthy—as that was the most important aspect of any tree.  First, he explained that I went a bit heavy on the beauty bark last year and will get away with not doing any this year. (Ashley, doctors orders. No bark this year on the honey-do list). After finishing the inspection of the front, we inspected the stumps and a few trees I wanted gone and the loggers hadn’t removed. The arborist couldn’t have been happier.

He went on to explain that healthy trees will have a one-to-one ratio regarding roots. For every one inch in diameter of the tree, there will be a foot of roots that expand. They will become intertwined with one another and use their neighbors for strength during storms. Each of these massive evergreens were very much connected.

Over the next hour we mapped out our root system. It became very clear that had the loggers taken out any of the stumps, or in any way impacted the root system (that I wanted out for purely aesthetic reasons) I would have likely had multiple evergreens laying in my dining room. I wanted to see the trees removed, not all of them, but most. However, the arborist made it abundantly clear that the remaining trees were relying upon one another for survival.

Trees ten or twenty feet away from each other were relying upon each other’s roots to get through our never-ending northwest winter storms.  In fact, my neighbors’ trees and their neighbors’ trees were all using each other’s roots to stay upright. If we thinned out the community by removing a tree or two, the entire system would have been negatively impacted or could’ve even failed entirely. The arborist didn’t need to tell me not to cut the trees down. His lesson was enough.

No, I have not been meditating on the arborist’s life lessons for the past year, but it was very visually impactful. I learn through seeing. If I see it and apply information … I can remember it.  Staring up at these monstrous trees I realized that trees hundreds of feet away were helping keep these ones upright. This was something that will certainly stick in my long-term memory.

Human roots are no different. We don’t physically grow into the ground and affix ourselves to our neighbors in a literal sense, but if we analyze our community through the same way we do our tree system there certainly should be similarities.

Many of you know my struggle with depression. It’s no secret. It’s actually more of an anxiety complex that leads to depression, but to be frank I am not sure which one is driving the ship at any given point.

What I do know is that this struggle is no less difficult today than it was five years ago. Some days it’s more difficult. I have much more knowledge on my condition and have a great support system in place, but my struggle is just as real at this very moment as it was when I first was diagnosed.

One problem with my struggle is that I have expected a cure—to be rid of the disease by now. That belief in itself can drive further frustration. I’m sure it does with my family and friends.  Candidly, if I were them I would wonder “Why does this still impacts him in this way?”  I would wonder “How, after five years, does he still have days where he has thoughts of no longer living.” “How can he not see it? It makes no sense.” “He seemed fine yesterday at work and at Church on Sunday.” Fortunately, my root system doesn’t think like I do. They opted to instead dig deeper and entangle themselves more into our lives.

The arborist explained to me that roots close to the surface are more susceptible to the elements. The same with our relationships. If the folks in your root system know nothing more about you than how work is going and where you spent your last vacation, then they are living too close to the surface and are susceptible to the elements. Those roots cannot help a tree twenty feet away, let alone when they are nearly touching it. Practically, you can’t take this to the extreme and expect to be so deeply connected to everyone you know, but you should have metaphorical “neighbor trees” to help keep you upright.

The people you and your children spend the most time with should be having the discussion about important topics in life—as compared to whether or not the Astros should be stripped of their 2017 title (they should). You may not be the most eager to dive into someone’s life or are just uncomfortable with being too emotional, but don’t underestimate how powerful the question “Why?” can be. Try it. See where it takes you. The next time someone is voicing frustration with a job or an issue at home, press them on why they are feeling that way. Don’t be a toddler and simply recite the question “Why?” Get curious about their life and circumstance. I can assure you that with true curiosity and a desire to help, you can develop deep roots with your community.

Beyond going deep, healthy roots must also intertwine. This concept runs parallel to being deeply rooted, but more practically speaking it means being tied together. In this world it’s very easy to get up on a Monday, go to work, get the kids to sports at night, finish some homework, pack the lunches, and get up on Tuesday and do the same thing. Wednesday is no different and neither are the weekends—except potentially eating out versus the packed lunch. Not once did we grab coffee (let alone send a text) with our friend that had recently revealed a health episode. Not once did we invite over a family to just have dinner. I’m not going to sit here and call the kettle black or throw stones. I have just as many shortcomings as the next person. Yet I can tell you that when my community intertwined themselves in my life it was and remains transforming. To get a text checking in on how I am truly doing and being given the freedom to say, “I’m down today,” is more than enough to show how much my community cares. Being intertwined at the root level is a two-way street. There will days that you need the support of others, but you have to grasp equally onto others and help support them and engage with them.

As I said earlier, the arborist took a jab at my generous amount of beauty bark and gave me insight into how important proper nutrition is to the roots. I was advised that the concentration of beauty bark to nutrients was lacking. I needed to scrape away the bark and mix in wood chips and soil, or over time I would run into trouble. Your community roots need to be equally nutritious. You are what you consume.  Your community is what it consumes. This applies on the individual level as well, but if your community is constantly focused on unhealthy habits—whether that is drinking, gossiping or simply watching tv you’d be ashamed to watch with your mom—then it may be fair to say that it may be lacking in nutrients. I don’t mean to suggest that you must spend your time reading scripture and laying hands on one another in prayer to have nutritious relationships, but certainly if your focus is more on what you are drinking as compared to how your neighbors are doing, then your priorities may be a bit backwards.  Don’t take me for a sober saint that reads the Bible each Friday with my friends. I don’t and I believe we are called to be in fellowship with one another.

One final point the arborist did not explicitly say, but became evident, was that your roots need to be inspected by someone with expertise. This is particularly true if you have concerns like I did. When I have a bad episode It feels like a setback when I am encouraged to call my counselor. Often it’s Ashley who says, “Make an appointment.”  However, they are experts and more often than not I’m able to get above water. I can breathe again.

Our personal roots are as vital as those to the trees in my yard. Without deep, intertwined, and properly nutrient-rich roots those trees would have toppled in our first wind storm of last year. Fortunately, they didn’t. The same can be said for me. Without my root system I certainly would not be where I am today.  It seems a bit melodramatic to say, but I am here today in part because of the people who have dove deep into life with me. Creating healthy roots takes time and effort but I cannot encourage you enough to start now before the storm season begins.