Connie Thoughts

I was driving to camp this year reflecting on trips to camp in past summers, thankful for how things have changed. I was remembering longing to leave home and taste the freedom that life on the road brought. And what was more free-feeling than travelling with a group of young adults five to ten years younger than myself! I felt youthful and alive! Unlike how I felt at home….Reuben and I hadn’t been married that long when I started taking teams of young adults around British Columbia and Alberta each summer to do camp ministry.

Unfortunately, Reuben and I had a pretty rough go the first eight years of our marriage. We were two stubborn people learning to become self-less. Needless to say, that “learning” was taking longer than expected. I talk about it further in my blog, “And they lived happily ever after”, but to set the stage, let me just briefly mention the disillusion I lived in regarding marriage. I was a dreamer, and in my eyes, Reuben was a dream-squasher (now I see his objections as a gift that save me from a ton of trouble). Our constant failing to see eye to eye spiralled me into a death trap of focusing on furthering my “career”, which happened to be full time ministry.

I didn’t know how to deal with my disappointment in my marriage, so I was determined to pour my heart into work. Looking back, I wish I would have put that much “heart” into my relationship with Reuben.Summer would come and I would run away from home for sometimes weeks upon weeks of camp ministry. While on the road, I wouldn’t have to be constantly reminded of the anticlimax I had experienced with the romantic notion of marriage I had created in my mind. While away, I lived carefree, spent money like the young adults on my team, and only called home every so often. I was having the time of my life.

I remember one camp in Sorrento, someone said to me; “You have so much love for everyone else, but you need to focus that same love onto your home”. I will never forget those words. Even to this day, when I feel my independence rising, those words echo in my heart.

 

 

I am thankful to say that for the last four years of continuing doing camps each summer, I’m no longer running away from home. In fact, I’m a blubbering mess leaving my hubby – even though I only do one week of camp each summer. I hate being away from him. I want to call home every day to hear his voice and make sure all is well. And instead of bringing along young adults, I’ve opted for a younger model: my son, and as of this summer, baby as well.

 

 

My heart is full of thankfulness for the change God has worked in my life. For me, I was running way to camp. For other women, it’s a different place they run to; the mall to shop, the job, the hobby, the club, the girls trip, the other man…. All very different, but caused by the same dissatisfaction with what they felt marriage was going to look like.

 

 

From a former runaway, I want you to hear my plea: stop running. Stop running to whatever it is eases your pain and run back to the man you married. I know it’s painful and hard. Even when you both want to work hard to make it work, its still one of the hardest things you’ll ever push through…. but also the most rewarding.

 

 

In the words of Switchfoot; “This is your life. Are you who you wanna be?” You get to choose who you become. Are you who you want to be? Are you the wife, the mom you daydreamed about when you were a little girl? Are you “present”? You can be. You can have a marriage that makes it, if your man wants it to work too.  Honestly, I’m shocked ours lasted, but we didn’t give up and because of that, our relationship has a depth it would never have experienced without walking that road.

 

No more running.