For four Monday nights now I’ve been going to a men’s Bible study at church. I almost didn’t sign up. Not because I didn’t think I needed it. Because I’ve gotten older, and somewhere in there it got harder to walk into a room of strangers. I used to be an extrovert. Twenty years of conference rooms will do things to that.
There are several men that attend, but they have broken this down into small groups. I think it’s safe to say I’m one of the greyer guys in the room and have been married longer than most. I am getting used to being one of the old guys at the table, which is new.
The first week, two of the younger men said they were getting married soon. I told both of them the same thing: if she’s the one you’re supposed to be with, this is the best decision you’ll ever make. It will only make you better.
This week one of them had already gone and done it, and he was glad. The other one was talking about wanting to be a good husband and a good man. He said he never wanted a mistake that he made to cost him in his future, and then he said he was afraid it would get in the way with his current wife.
Before I could stop myself, I looked him square in the eye and said, “Not current. Only.”
As a follower of Jesus , I don’t plan for failure. To me, when you make a covenant vow with a woman who is going to be your wife, the sentence ends there. There is no current. There is only.
I don’t think he knew he’d said it. That’s how it works. The word you reach for is the thing you’re bracing for.
I signed up for that group to be mentored. I still want that. What I hadn’t counted on is that at forty-eight, with almost twenty-eight years of marriage and a son who is taller than me, I am also standing where the mentor stands, whether I meant to or not. I don’t want to miss it.
The verse that night was 2 Timothy 1:7. God has not given us a spirit of fear. I had come with a list of my own. Before we got to mine, a man twenty years younger handed me his, and it turned out I had something to say about it.
