Faith, Love & Truth
As I was browsing through my feed, I came across a post from a sweet wife. She had a rough marriage day, and felt safe to vent about her husband there. She felt as if she was among friends and I understood her reason for reaching out. What shocked me was the hundreds of comments that followed, urging her to leave her husband. You deserve better, you need to just leave, he clearly doesn’t love you, follow your heart and you are worth more than this were among some of the ones repeated over and over. I can’t imagine how overwhelmed her heart must have felt. And my heart broke for her.
Haven’t we all had days like that, in the messy trenches of life? The kids are screaming and one is hanging off your leg, the laundry and dishes are piled to the ceiling and your husband just walked through the door and didn’t take his muddy boots off. We’ve all had those days. After all, marriage is just two imperfect people living together, failing daily.
Because to be completely honest, I’m going to say something you don’t want to hear so brace yourselves…marriage isn’t that hard.
And before you say “that’s because you haven’t been through what we have”, let me tell you this. We’ve endured the loss of parents and grandparents. We’ve had a routine surgery end in a near-death experience. We’ve been through 17 surgeries at 6 hospitals in 2 states with countless different surgeons. We’ve heard “you need a stent placed in your brain” and then endured some very sleepless nights while counting on doctors, nurses and clinics all while relying fully on the Lord. We’ve lived through a separation, job changes, night-shifts, sleepless nights of sick children, financial strain and differing opinions. And we’ve been poor y’all, like count-your-change-to-go-to-the-store poor. But I can still look you in the eye and say that marriage is not hard. And I mean that.
What is hard is life. But waking up next to this sweet man, my best friend, every day is not hard. Having someone by my side that has seen me at my weakest and my worst, that looks past the 3rd day of dry shampoo and sweatpants, that knows the good and bad of the depths of my soul but loves me anyways…that is not hard.
When our focus shifts to the hardness of marriage, we not only rob ourselves of the joy found in displaying the love of Christ but we honestly downplay the beauty of it. Christian marriage is intended to be a picture of the relationship between Christ and His church. Let me say that again, because it blew my mind when I first learned it. Our marriage was designed specifically to mirror our relationship between Christ and His church. We are acting out a living parable where husbands represent Christ and wives represent the church to bring glory to God and to help our children and others around us grasp what God is like in a more concrete way. Does that change the way you look at marriage? It sure did with me. God intended marriage to mirror His relationship with the church so that we could be a testimony to others and SHOW them what God is like.
Marriage means intentionally looking for love. It’s choosing each other daily. Love is strung together choices. The feelings, undoubtedly, will rise and fall. Being in love with love will fade as the toughness of life becomes a reality. As life goes on we all change, we grow, we mature, and life changes us. But marriage is not meant to be a lifetime commitment to fairy tale love alone. Marriage is designed to be a repetitive I do, a daily commitment of choosing us over me. You choose to love who they are at each point in life, not only who they used to be.
Every hardness we come across in our marriage can be traced back to sin – infidelity, porn addiction, insecurity, jealousy, selfishness, on and on. That is why we see a culture full of broken marriages. I’m not discounting hardship in whatever form it appears in your marriage, but you can’t run from sin. That’s the thing about sin, it will just follow you into your next relationship. Eventually, hardships will appear in that marriage as well.
Staying married isn’t always easy. It might mean you giving up your right to win, giving up always wanting to be right and having the last word, putting your pride aside and putting your spouses needs before your own. The beautiful thing is the more we put these practices to work, the more you become like Christ.
Romans 8:28 says And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. Our marriages aren’t exempt from this. When we are in the middle of a trial in marriage, it’s hard to see how God could ever use it for good. But He has promised to use them for good, and He is faithful to keep His word. Give your marriage over to God and allow Him to heal the hardness. And He will bring beauty from the ashes.
When I fail (do I ever y’all), when I hope my husband chokes on his cereal, and when I am anything but the perfect wife, it is because I am a broken woman in a broken world – it is not because marriage is hard, it’s because sin is hard. The only way to make your marriage truly work is to center it on Christ. You have to rely on God for wisdom, power, love and strength for your marriage. And forgiveness, for that one time you hoped he would choke.
While I have always been comfortable canning foods, dehydrating was a different story. Up until this point in time, my experience in dehydrating put me in the intermediate category. I could proudly claim dried herbs and venison jerky, but that was as far as my dehydrating experience went. But a recent Facebook post peaked my interest, claiming dehydrated strawberries tasted just like Twizzlers. Over the following days I couldn’t stop thinking about and knew I had to try it.
My dehydrator is a smoke-colored Ronco brand, circa 1993, sold in one of those fabulous early 90s infomercials. The infomercial even included a shout out for that fabulous spray on hair for bald spots. Basically spray paint for your head. My father-in-law gave me this dehydrator years ago, and with not really having much experience with it I just packed it away.
My husband and I were at our local grocery store this week, and they had strawberries on sale 2 lbs. for $5. As soon as I saw them, I knew I would quickly be getting that dehydrator out of the closet and putting it to use!
First I washed the fruit very well. You could use an all natural produce wash if you want, I just used water for mine. You don’t need to dry them, since they’ll dry in the dehydrator anyway. Just realize working with dry fruit is easier and less messier than working with wet fruit. Cut the stems off of each strawberry and set them aside. If you have chickens (or a rabbit that lives in your house) they love these strawberry tops!
While some recommend blanching your strawberries before dehydrating them. Don’t waste your time. It is totally unnecessary. Also when you water-blanch you will lose water-soluable vitamins.
Laying the strawberries on their sides and slice them. When slicing the strawberries, the slices should be as uniform in thickness as possible so that they dry evenly. The slices should be 1/4″ for thin pieces or 3/8″ for thicker piece. Lay the slices on the dehydrator trays in a single layer. The end pieces should be laid with skin side down. Make sure to place them far enough apart so they don’t touch or overlap. You want to allow air circulation. You should leave at least 1/4 inch space around the food pieces.
Some of the strawberry slices may be small and would easily fall through the tray as they shrink. My dehydrator came with an insert that I can put underneath the fruit to prevent them from falling through. If yours doesn’t have an insert, I would recommend checking the website of the manufacturer that made your food dehydrator and ordering mesh trays.
Allow the strawberries to dehydrate for 8-18 hours. My dehydrator has a single heating element in the bottom, which means rotating the trays often is a must. The strawberries are done when you squeeze them and there is very little “squish” left. Since this was my first time dehydrating strawberries, it was a bit of trial and error for me.
If your slices aren’t perfectly even in thickness, as mine obviously weren’t, you may find that some strawberries dehydrate faster than others. Just remove the ones that are finished and keep dehydrating the ones that are not. Most of my strawberries were done in around 15 hours, but some of the bigger pieces had to go for around 24 hours. I recommend tasting as you go until you get to your desired doneness.
When they are done, you will have dehydrated strawberries and feel pretty accomplished. I was shocked how sweet they are. And yes, they absolutely taste like Twizzlers!