The Equally Yoked Series: "Two Is Better Than One"

Welcome back to a new article and a new series where I will be discussing [Godly] relationships. For this new article, I thought about dabbling a little into a question I've come to ask myself as well as people around me a lot: can a Christian marry a non-believer? I am sure you have heard it before: do not marry a non-believer. We’ve all been there and heard the infamous “unequally yoked” verse. You have managed to drill it into your head and yet, here you are, reading this article because you have inevitably fallen for a handsome man  or a beautiful woman who is everything you can ask from a man/ woman but is not a believer. And you are beginning to think of all the couples you know where one of the spouses is a non-believer and yet they still manage to make it work. And so you contemplate the idea of marrying someone who is not on the same spiritual journey you are on but swears that they respect and support you. Fair enough. I am not judging you and trust me when I say I have been there and I know it all too well: the anger, the bargaining, the compromises and then the realization that perhaps it is not going to work out so well for you in the end. And let me tell you this… Nothing hurts more than letting go of something you truly want and desire (that and being told you can’t have your favorite food because there is no gluten free version of it yet… Gosh… ) I am not judging you at all because I have been there but let me give you my take on this matter hoping that it will help you better assess the direction you want to go in from this place of heartache and confusion you stand at right now.

A few days ago while I was attending Bible study, we were discussing  Ecclesiast 4: 9-12. And although we were talking about a totally different topic still related to that passage, verse 12 caught my attention in particular as being (in my opinion) one of the keys to a successful marriage:

“Two people are better off than one, for they can help each other succeed. If one person falls, the other can reach out and help. But someone who falls alone is in real trouble […] A person standing alone can be attacked and defeated, but two can stand back-to-back and conquer. Three are even better, for a triple-braided cord is not easily broken.”

A couple where both spouses are Christians has higher chances of standing compared to one where only one is a Christian because you both cover each other spiritually and can stand strong as a couple in spiritual warfare (yes this is a real thing… Might post an article someday about it). When one spouse is weak the other can pray and stand strong for the other and vice versa; a little bit like watching a house: if one person is tired, falls asleep or missing his/her turn at watching the house, the other person can cover for it. The second part spoke more to me as having a marriage/ relationship centered on Christ: when things will get rocky, both spouses will know where to run (in the presence of God) and who to run to (God). They will seek counsel from people who can and will (hopefully) direct them according to the Word of God. Having built a marriage on Christ assures a household built on solid foundations (both spouses in agreement with spiritual principles and acting accordingly, Matt 7:24) with the condition that both spouses are equally working on having a successful and healthy marriage, committed to God and committed to each other.

A Christ-centered and godly marriage does not guarantee that things will run smoothly. If you think it does, I got breaking news: you’re wrong. What it means however is that when things go wrong you know in which direction to go. And that is why it is important to walk in the same direction as mentioned in Amos 3:3.

“Can two people walk together without agreeing on the direction?”

What this means is that either you will go in one direction (one spouse pulling the other: towards God or away from God) or you will walk in separate directions (which totally defeats the purpose of marriage). Marrying a non-believer seems like a good idea in the moment and might even work on the short run. But down the road, issues will arise especially if you are called to go further in your walk with God: the distance of your spouse to God will be echoed in your marriage as you grow closer to God.

So now what? Well you tell me! If you are reading this, chances are you have already decided what your next step will be but you are looking for clues, signs or what not to comfort you in your decision. Marriage is a personal decision just like salvation: you marry someone who is good for you and to you, not for the people giving their opinion on who they think you should marry. Two things I will tell you however are: 1) figure out what is the most important to you between a spouse and a godly spouse and once you do, 2) pray. Leave it to God to be what He wants things to be without getting too caught up in your feelings and/emotions because they can deceive you.

Hope this helped.

Until next time,

xo

Being A Savage Doesn't Mend A Broken Heart: Only Time Does.

We hurt, we learn, we grow… But how many of us are stunting our growth by what we refuse to learn? By what we refuse to let go of? By the emotions we deny ourselves thinking that if we conceal and pretend long enough that we don’t feel them, eventually they will go away?
Oh honey... emotions buried alive don’t die: they fester and show up as inappropriate behaviors. Iyanla Vanzant said it, life taught me, way before I found those words.


See I am part of that generation of "savages": we laugh it all off to the face of the world only to cry ourselves to sleep in the lonely hours. We pretend to be okay because we have a duty to entertain “an audience” but really, all we are comes to two things: walking broken hearts and wounded souls; each and everyone carrying burdens and emotional baggage that we are too scared to undo. We seem to have it all figured out, with social media and the whole shenanigans, but in reality we are hollow and empty. We are shadows of who we used to be simply because we refused to acknowledge that the hurt was real and when it caught up with us the aftermath was not pretty. We deny ourselves the right to hurt and to grieve because we have been taught that to say that we are hurt is to be weak. And so we jump from one thing/ person to another to distract our mind and heart from something that is so very real, from a pain that knows no name and that pushes us everyday to the edge, the edge of reason. Physically standing but emotionally crumbling, physically alive but emotionally dying from a slow and painful death that nobody can see because we are too good at masking our pain; walking around like Superman and letting our inner Clark Kent die, only forgetting they both depend on each other to stay alive. We get so caught up playing superhero that we forget we're only humans and God forbid we admit we also need saving and rescue from the very things that eat us alive, the things that keep us up at night.


Being a savage doesn’t mend a broken heart baby, only time does; time and a little faith: Faith that you won’t stay in the same spot forever; faith that one day you will wake up and something inside you will have settled. And then on your journey to recovery you will pick up some strength: Strength to not run back to the things that broke you; strength to overcome your worst days, realizing without shame that your struggle is real but so worth it. And in those days when the pain seems unbearable, in those days where your feet might buckle under the burden of your pain and healing heart, take a look back to get some more strength: a look back to the better days to keep you going and to keep you strong. Remind yourself of the days where you successfully kept your head out of the water, remind yourself of the days where you successfully weathered some of the most violent storms designed to break even the strongest of us all.


Being a savage doesn’t mend a broken heart. Time does. Time and little bit of faith alongside with a dash of hope. We are all a little crooked and broken, but baby that’s how the light gets in. We are all a little broken in our very own ways but that how we learn, that’s how we grow.

-Excerpt from a memoir I will never write #5