God's Marriage or My Marriage

By Kelley Bell

Is something missing in your marriage? Are you uncertain where to start to repair or strengthen your marriage? Is your marriage based on your perception or God's intention? 

God's Marriage or My Marriage will help you address all of these questions! This book provides women with practical steps to create a thriving marriag

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kelley Bell Consulting, LLC
• Release date: May 26, 2021
• ISBN: 9781737264613

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

I first would like to thank you for desiring to be a woman to change the misconceptions and worldly views of marriage. Your purchase of this book indicates your goal and desire to have a prosperous and healthy marriage. The process of becoming a wife after God’s own heart is indeed a process and not something that happens overnight. Becoming a wife after God’s own heart comes with being intentional. Though the process can be challenging and even uncomfortable, it is also rewarding and at times peaceful. I know that it will be exciting and one of the best decisions you could ever make. Today, my marriage is the strongest that it has ever been. I have a marriage of trust, honesty, impeccable communication, kindness, forgiveness, friendship, a representation of God’s grace and overall enjoyment.

I write this book out of true transparency of my journey and my process for creating the marriage that God desires.

I married my college sweetheart at the age of 22 on November 14, 2007. Shortly after getting married, we had our first child. As you could imagine, this didn’t give us much time to get to know each other as husband and wife even though we had been friends for many years. I quickly went from being a newlywed trying to figure out how to be a wife to fretting and trying to figure out how to be a mom. Which do you think became my first priority? Well, learning how to be a good mother became my priority. My husband and I loved each other and really cared about each other, and we lived our marriage in a way that can be simply put – This is ok – it’s working. We later moved from our college town to Orlando, Florida where we decided to continue our lives together.

Shortly after this move, my five-year-old bonus son moved in with us. At this time, I had been married for two years; I was now raising two sons, and I was trying to figure out life. I was trying to balance all of this while still learning how to be a wife and a mother. On top of all of this, we had the added stress of making sure we had enough money to pay our bills. My husband started working as a radio dispatcher for a cable company. I became an elementary school music teacher. As one could imagine, we didn’t have much money at the end of each check. We were trying to just survive.

I am great at handling the business affairs of our marriage as well as parenting. I honestly thought (during this season of our marriage) I was doing what needed to be done as a wife. A few years later, we had another son: child number three. At this point, we were doing okay. My husband had started a new career, and money had become less of an issue. He was working many hours, and I had started spending many hours serving at our church with the children right there with me. We were having good times and bad times, but it was nothing that I thought was out of the norm for a marriage. Yet again, I was basing my marriage norms from what I had observed growing up. Two years later, we received another blessing, another baby boy: child number four.

Now, here was my list of responsibilities at that time:

Mother of four precious boys

Minister of Music (I was the only musician at my church)

Praise and Worship Leader

Praise Dancer and Dance Leader (I was responsible for choreography)

Preaching when requested

Creating Sunday announcements using a projector for Sunday service

Full-time elementary music teacher for all grades

Taking an online college course working on my second master’s degree

And being a wife

The order that I wrote these responsibilities represents the order of my priorities at that time. I didn’t see a need to change my priorities, so I continued living life that way. Seven years within my marriage I had to face the harsh reality that my husband and I had grown apart. Trust was broken and I had to make a decision if I wanted our marriage to work. As time went on, I made the decision that I was going to start a journey to create a thriving marriage. I became intentional about doing the necessary work needed to repair and strengthen my marriage, by working on me.

In the beginning of this introduction, I share with you how amazing and wonderful my marriage currently is. You may probably be wondering how I was able to create that after trust was broken. Based on my list of responsibilities I share, I had to learn how to put my role as a wife at the top of my list and not at the bottom.

Now that I have presented you a glimpse of an unbalanced marriage and life, I want to share with you the important details I learned so I could create the life and marriage God intended for my family and me.

CHAPTER ONE

Marriage: The Point of it All

Marriages go through many cycles, and I have learned that there must be a central and stable foundation to that relationship. Who knows your spouse better than you do? God. Is it really possible for a couple to have a thriving and healthy relationship after trust has been broken?

I am here to tell you it is!

Through my experience, I have learned that one of the most important relationships that a person must have, when deciding to make the commitment to become one’s life partner, is a personal relationship with God.

Marriage was ordained by God, so how could a person think that they could maintain a healthy and thriving marriage without Him? While I went into my marriage knowing scriptures pertaining to marriage, I can’t say that I was truly applying those biblical principles in the beginning. I knew about God’s desire for marriage, but no one told me how much work this would really take. I didn’t have many people around me that were open and transparent about the challenges I would actually face during my marriage. I relied on the mothers of the church, co-pastors, first ladies, etc. to help me, but I was often met with ONLY scriptures. Scriptures aren’t effective if you don’t possess the knowledge on how to apply them and if you don’t have any real-life examples to follow.

After spending time with God, reading many books, and attending counseling sessions from a few professionals, I learned how to create the balance needed for a thriving marriage. The balance in my life was created after I was able to fully integrate biblical principles with relationship skills. Through that process, I set a personal goal that I was going to be transparent with EVERY woman that came to me to talk about marriage. My struggles along with my victories are what have shaped me to be the woman I am today. They have also shaped my marriage to be as amazing as it is today.

Before diving into the steps I took to develop the healthy and thriving relationship I have now, I must lay down the scriptural foundation of my beliefs as well as foundational practical thoughts I applied to my marriage. Please stick with me as I promise you, we will get to some good details in the chapters to come. The scriptures I am about to share are God’s view of marriage and ultimately the goal of a Christ centered marriage.

Let’s dive in!

What is marriage?

Marriage is a relationship between a man and a woman. This relationship should consist of an intimate bond as well as an equal partnership. God, who is the creator of male and female in His image, established this union. In the Christian faith, marriage is demonstrated through a public declaration of the couple’s love and commitment