Stephen Bly Down A Western Trail

An All Season Marriage

August 04, 2022 Stephen Bly Season 2 Episode 19
Stephen Bly Down A Western Trail
An All Season Marriage
Show Notes Transcript

FAMILY  Season 2, Episode 019 "An All Season Marriage" audio podcast by award-winning western author Stephen Bly. Recorded August 1995, at Christa Week, Canyon Beach Christian Conference Center, Oregon. Sponsored by BlyBooks.com Legacy Series.  

"Detecting Seasons of Marriage" blog post article found here:  https://www.blybooks.com/2022/08/seasons-of-marriage/

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All Season Marriage
Stephen Bly
August 1995
Recorded at Christa Week, Canyon Beach Christian Conference Center, Oregon 

This morning I want to talk about a topic I’ve described as the “All Season Marriage.” 

In Matthew 19:4ff, Jesus said, “Haven’t you read that at the beginning the Creator made them male and female and said to them, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and the two of them will become one flesh. So they are no longer two but one. Therefore, what God has joined together, let man not separate.’”

“Father in heaven, I do pray that you’ll guide us that we can understand our own marriage and marriage relationships. And that we can learn from your Word and the prompting of your Spirit those things that will help us grow strong and glorify you together. For I pray that in Jesus’ Name, Amen.”

Janet and I celebrated our 32nd anniversary a month or two ago. That’s a nostalgic time to think back to remember all those years and anniversaries. And I thought back on the wedding day. I sure remember that day. We got married on a Friday about 4:00 p.m. in town. 

I lived out in the country, and I was working on the farm until 12:30 or 1:00 driving tractor. As I quit, I told one of the hired men working with me that I was taking off the rest of the afternoon. He wanted to know why. I said, “I’m getting married.” And he said, “Well, you’ll be back in the morning, won’t you?” I replied, “No, I don’t think I’ll be back until Monday morning.”

Then, I got cleaned up and drove into town in my ’55 Chevy convertible and wondering to myself, what in the world am I doing? 

The service was in a small Presbyterian chapel where Janet’s boss attended. Neither Janet nor I attended church at the time nor were Christians. That was the first time I found out June 14th was Flag Day, a holiday. After the wedding we went to the photographer’s and all the flags were flying on Main Street. We thought that was so nice of them to hang them out. 

After the picture taking session, and got out clothes changed, we drove up into the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas near where we lived and stopped by to see Janet’s grandmother who was bedridden, dying of cancer, and couldn’t be at the wedding. Then, we had our wedding night dinner together at The Buckaroo Inn in Three Rivers, California. She sort of expected that, I guess. We ordered steaks and baked potatoes. 

Over the years, we’ve gone through lots of anniversaries and seasons. This morning I want to talk about the seasons in a marriage. 

Now, there’s a tendency, I suppose, to talk about seasons in a sense of years. That is, when you first get married it’s the springtime, then as you get going through the years, it’s summer. Then later on after you’ve been married quite a few years, it’s the autumn time, and then when you’re more elderly, maybe that’s the winter. As though a marriage stretches from wedding day to death through seasons. That might be one good way to look at things. But what I want to talk about are the seasons we go through all the time. We go through spring, summer, autumn, and winter, not just as years. Sometimes we go through those four seasons in a marriage every month. Sometimes every day. 

Let us look at what those seasons are, those repeating, those revolving seasons in a marriage, the characteristics of spring and summer and autumn and winter. And I want to challenge some of you who might be widows or widowers or single parents to think of these things in friendships too. 

We will look at the characteristics, then I’ll give you some examples and principles for those seasons and how we can strengthen our relationships with our mate. 

SPRING SEASON

It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been married, if you’re in a spring season, then everything seems new, fresh, and wonderful. You have a high energy level of achievement. Everything seems within reach. 

For instance, whenever you come back from a good marriage retreat, it’s always springtime, no matter what the temperature is outside. You’re ready to accomplish anything. There are some special attitudes you need in springtime. One, of course, is the attitude of love and it’s easy in springtime to show love. Mates can hardly do anything wrong. 

We also need that attitude of patience in springtime because it’s easy to run ahead of your mate in projects and dreams and ideas. You’re feeling so good and strong and everything’s exciting. 

You also need special wisdom because in springtime we don’t always think things through carefully. It’s the best time for dreaming dreams. It’s a ‘what if’ time. What if we moved to Idaho to write full-time? That dream can for us in 1983 and 1984 and 1985 and 1986 and 1987. Finally, in 1988 we did it. 

Springtime is the best time to ask your mate for some money. Ah, in the springtime of a relationship, everything’s possible. “Of course, anything you want, honey, that’s great.” It’s probably the worst time to have a serious discussion about trying to change your mate’s behavior. In the springtime everything’s wonderful as it is. 

It’s not a good time for making long-range, unchangeable decisions. You can dream about them in the springtime but maybe not make the final decision. Pray it through more than one season. And it’s not a good time for door-to-door salesmen to come by. You’re going to get stuck with lots of stuff. 

There are real blessings in that time of relationships too. All sorts of mushy things happen. There are gifts and cards and notes and actions. It seems to be easy to show affection. In the springtime, you can really do no wrong. It’s a good time to bang the car up. Who cares? We’ll get it fixed. No problem. In the springtime of a relationship, you’ll actually get to experience some of those dreams. 

But there are dangers. You might forget to ask for God’s wisdom. You get so caught up, everything’s exciting. You’re feeling like you can tackle the world. You forget to ask what God wants for you next. You have study and prayer together and it can be intense, but probably will be sporadic because there are so many avenues to explore and things to think about. It’s easy to get sidetracked. You don’t follow through on all the promises. In fact, you think of so many good things, you forget about the good things you thought about doing. But you’re mate may not forget. So, it’s a time to watch out. 

You can also go overboard on trivial matters. You’re feeling good. Things are going good. You can spend four hours rearranging food in the pantry and forget to cook dinner. 

There are lots of spiritual benefits. You can discover some great lifetime goals in springtime and some of those dreams hang on forever. Whether you dream about your job or your family or a ministry or a house you want. Or maybe you dream about what you can accomplish together for the Lord. The dreams in springtime you can hang onto all your lives. 

There may also be extemporaneous acts of grace and love. You’ll wonder how your mate thought to do something. Where did that come from? And there’s a potential for rapid growth in knowledge of God and His greatness. You have that idea that God can do anything.

Here’s what I’ve selected as a theme verse for springtime of a relationship.

Matthew 6:33, “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you.”

To me, that’s an exciting and challenging and tempering verse. Of all these great ideas and all the energy we have together, let’s make sure it’s right. Maybe the kind of prayer you’d have is along this line. “Lord, may our goals and our dreams and our actions be divinely noble and bring you pleasure.”

That’s what it’s like in springtime. And as I mentioned, spring, summer, fall and winter can all come in the same month or even in the same week. What does summer look like in comparison?

SUMMER SEASON

In the summertime of a relationship, you’re swamped with things to do. You’re busy. You don’t have much time for dreaming because you’re doing all those things you dreamt about together in the springtime. You begin to see good progress in your marriage, in your family, in your relationships, because you’ve been working hard. I think also in the summer some of those grand, early ideas will have to be abandoned because you can’t do everything you think of. 

We need an attitude of discipline. Everything is not quite as new or as exciting as it used to be We need an attitude of perseverance because everything will take more work and the results will come more slowly than you imagine. In the spring, things can be accomplished quickly but by summer you realize it takes a lot of hard work.

But I think also in the summer, there’s a real joy in daily progress. We’re working together. We’re working on something. We’re getting closer. I think the summertime of a relationship is the best time to rub their backs and tell them they’re the greatest. I think it’s the worst time to bring up some of those springtime dreams that aren’t happening. They’re working hard on other things and there’s no reason to remind them of what didn’t happen. 

There will be blessings in the summer. You’ll be doing your best work. The summertime relationships are when the most is accomplished. Maybe more than you thought. You’ll begin to feel important. What you’re doing is important.

But there are dangers. You’ll start to get tired, and you and your mate may not agree on what to set aside. You’ll wonder if certain things are really going to change at all. You’re working hard now, and you haven’t seen the results you’d like to see yet.  

But there are lots of benefits in the summertime. You’ll complete some important jobs. You’ll have a satisfaction that you’re giving yourself to something important. You begin to feel like an inseparable team together. Yeah, it’s tough and hard, but we’re in it together and we’re making good progress.    

Theme verse for the summertime relationship …

Matthew 20:26,27, “Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant. Whoever wants to be first must be your slave.” 

In summertime you work like a servant and slave. But it’s worth it. You gain ground. 

A prayer in summertime … “Lord, give us the energy to work hard at building our marriage and the humility to do it your way.” 

Sooner or later in the year, in the month, or in the week or that same day, you’ll pass from summer to autumn. 

AUTUMN SEASON

In the autumn time, you start to see some obvious results from all your hard work. Autumn is when the harvest comes. After much work, you begin to see some results. In autumn, life becomes very routine but that’s not all bad. You’ve worked hard in summer and developed a physical, mental, and spiritual routine. You’ve fallen into a pattern. That’s not always bad to be predictable.

In the autumn everything feels used, lived-in, secondhand, including you and your mate. We need an attitude of sensitivity, understanding how our mate’s feeling. We need an attitude of boldness because we’re going to have to suggest some changes. Some things by then are obviously not working. 

We need an attitude of openness to listen to our mate’s frustrations. Autumn is maybe the best time to reevaluate those goals and dreams. The autumn time of a relationship is a great time to go on that marriage retreat. Autumn is perhaps the worst time to get your mate to assume more duties and responsibilities. They’re just too tired to take on something new. 

There are some blessings because you’ll see success. People inside and outside the family will see your progress and note it to you. You’ll see it is worth it. There are changes. We are accomplishing the goals and dreams. 

The dangers include being too tired to do the job anymore. We can grow increasingly impatient with our mate. We can be so lulled by the routine that we don’t hear God’s call and mandate for us to change, to be different. 

But there will be benefits. By autumn we can admit there are some things we can’t do without God. In the spring we thought we could do just about anything. And we worked hard all through the summer. But by autumntime we have to admit we can’t do it without Him. We have to seek and recognize the Holy Spirit’s work in our family life.

Maybe a theme verse in autumntime …

Matthew 18:20, “Where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them.” 

That, of course, is the theme verse of every small church in America. But I think it could be a theme verse in our marriage relationships. It says, “where two or three are gathered together, there am I.” Husband and wife gathered in His name, the Lord is there. We need Him.

A prayer might be, “Lord, help us to say the things you want us to say and to have the spiritual energy to follow through on all the things we’ve been working on and you want us to do. And to build up each other.”

Well, spring comes and summer and then at the end of autumn comes winter. So it is in a relationship, a marriage, and a friendship.

WINTER SEASON

The characteristics of winter are like this. In winter, the spring season seems so long, long ago. You can hardly remember when you felt good and felt strong and everything seemed fresh and new, and you had all these ideas and so fired up. It might have only been last week, but it seems like a long time ago. In aspects of your relationship in winter it seems like you’re back to square one. We’ve gone through a whole season and haven’t gained anything. We’re where we were a year ago. Or last week or last month. 

In the wintertime, we’re forced to admit we’ve had some failures. Some things have flopped. By then we can’t say anymore, “Well, let’s just push on a little bit more.” We have to admit, this is not working. 

We need an attitude of humility to admit our lack of progress. We need an attitude of graciousness in dealing with our mate’s continual struggles and faults. We need an attitude of forgiveness because the language of winter is harsh, critical, and hurtful. Wintertime in a relationship is the best time for a husband and wife to slip away for a few days by themselves to a place of privacy and for fun. 

Wintertime is perhaps the worst time to surprise your mate by buying expensive gifts or talk about how wonderful other couples are getting along. 

There will be blessings in that season because you’ll realize what’s really important about your marriage. Like a tree in the wintertime, you have a chance to grow strong in your roots and in your relationship with the Lord. In the wintertime one of the blessings is you begin to miss spring. You’re ready for the springtime to come. 

There are some dangers, of course. The grass looks greener in the wintertime. Other couples don’t go through what you go through, you think. You have a tendency to build some bad habits of condemnation and complaint. Some parts of your relationship might even seem dead. But there are possible benefits. In the wintertime we tend to throw ourselves on the mercy and grace and wisdom of God. We’ve run out of strength. We’ve run out of ideas. We’ve run out of power on our own. And I think in the wintertime is when we discover our relationship is much stronger than we thought it was. 

A theme verse for the winter of a relationship might be this … 

Matthew 19:6, “So they are no longer two but one. Therefore, what God has joined together let man not separate.”

We pray during this season, “Lord, strengthen us, protect us from the work of the evil one. And give us a renewed vision of spring.”

Spring and summer and autumn and winter …

Now, I want to give a few examples so you can begin to understand maybe where you are in that pattern of seasons. 

Let’s take something simple like what you have for supper. I can almost tell by what you have for supper as to where you are in those seasons of your relationship. If, for instance, this next week (you go home from Christa Week at Cannon Beach), if you have that fancy Oriental stir-fry salad recipe that was on the cover of Woman’s Day magazine, you are in the springtime of a relationship. If you have your family’s favorite meatloaf with vegetables and fruit salad, you’re in the summer of relationships. If you have chili dogs with canned chili, you’re in the autumn of that relationship. And if Mom says, “There’s some stuff in foil at the back of the freezer, you can nuke it yourself.” You’re in the winter. 

Let’s talk about those seasons in comparison to vacations. When it comes to choosing a vacation for next year, if you say, “We are going to load up the kids and drive to Disneyland this year,” you’re in the spring. If you say, “I think we’ll all go to the beach again like always,” you’re in the summer. If you say, “We’ve decided to stay home and paint the house,” you’re in the fall or autumn. And if you decide to just rent some videos and call in for Chinese, you’re definitely in the winter. 

You can see it in child raising. You’re in a crowded restaurant and mom has little baby, you can watch her and tell where she is in that relationship. If, for instance, baby drops the pacifier, she gets up and goes back in the kitchen and asks the chef for some hot, boiling water and sterilizes the pacifier, cools it down gently, and brings it back to the little lad, it is a springtime relationship with that child. If, on the other hand, when baby drops the pacifier, she picks it up and digs in the purse for the little wash and dry’s, wipes it off carefully and hands it back to the baby, it’s summer. If, when the baby drops the pacifier, she picks it up and wipes it on her sleeve and hands it back to the baby, it’s the autumn. And if when the baby drops the pacifier she looks down and gives it back to the baby, it’s definitely winter. 

You can see it in the television shows that you watch. If you and your mate are looking forward to that PBS PBS Presents Shakespeare Stratford on Avon show. It’s springtime. If you sit down on Saturday evening to watch, “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman” as always, it’s summertime. If you sit down to watch the Monday night football game and the wife doesn’t care because it gives her a chance to get something done, it’s autumn. And if you sit there to watch whatever comes on the screen next, whether it’s Big Time Wrestling, the Buying Channel, or a report on “suggested hoe handle production for the fiscal year ’95-’96,” it’s winter. 

I have a feeling you can tell if it’s spring or summer, autumn or fall. 

Now, here’s what I want us all to remember about those seasons when we think about an all-season relationship.

First of all, you and I are not trapped in any one season in our relationships.

One of the most heartfelt sayings from the Old West for ranchers, “Spring always comes!”

No matter how hard the winter, spring always comes. And you and I are never trapped in any one season. All those seasons have their different qualities. But you’re never trapped in any one. 

Here’s the second thing to remember. All seasons are beneficial to our relationships.

Every one of them holds potential for spiritual blessing. And I think we need every one of those seasons. It is unreal in a marriage relationship to always be in spring. You never get anything done, but it’s unreal to expect it. It’s unreal to think that summer’s going to be there forever. It’s unreal to think that the harvest time or the fall is going to be there forever. And it’s just as unreal to think it’s always going to be winter. 

All seasons are beneficial, and we need every one of them.

Third, our mate might not be in the same season that we are.

And we often don’t think to ask and find out. If you’ve got a husband who’s in spring and you’re in winter, you can hardly stand the guy. He’s got all these wonderful plans and all these things he’s going to get done and you’re saying, “Oh, sit down and be still. I’m tired.”

Here’s a fourth thing to remember, I think our goal is that we do live in the same season.

That is, we want to work to get in sync with each other. Let’s see how we can work out these seasons together, so we can be of more help to each other. Never getting in sync will cause a lot of bitterness and resentment. But when we’re in sync, we’ll go through it even a tough season. We’re in it together. We’ll get through this.

Fifth, God’s love and His relationship to us is never changed by our season.   

He doesn’t love us most in the spring or summer. He doesn’t forgive us more in one season over another. His relationship with us is not changed by whatever season we might happen to be in right now. 

Don’t pray to just get out of the present season. Pray that you’ll get all the spiritual benefit from the season you’re in now. Then, look forward to the next one. 

Where I live in north-central Idaho, the change of seasons is the most exciting time for me. One morning when I got up to run, it was 34 degrees and it got to a high in Winchester that day of about 64 degrees. It felt like autumn. It’s coming for us. I love the change, the day or two when it definitely changes. You can feel and taste it. The trees will look different. The colors will be coming. The ground and everything looks and feels different. We’re one of those strange people who love snow. So, sometime in the next few months we’ll get some flurries. But I can guarantee you by Thanksgiving, there will be six inches to a foot on the ground. Sometimes for our Thanksgiving dinner we have a cowboy meal out at the Crossing. I love it when that first snow stays on the ground. Winter is here. 

I love the springtime. Winter is often long in Winchester. Snow sometimes comes early. We not only have a white Thanksgiving and white Christmas, but we also have a white Easter and white Mother’s Day. I love the snow but, boy, the first day of spring you can feel the air is warm and the lake is starting to thaw. The birds start to return. It’s exciting. 

And we can’t hardly wait until that first summer day when it begins to be hot at 75 degrees or so. The clouds are gone and sun’s straight up in the blue sky and the flowers bloom, with a slightly cool breeze from the northwest. Summer’s here!

I think we can experience that same excitement as we change seasons in a marriage relationship. The season’s about to change. We can look forward to it. It’s natural. We’re going to find spiritual blessing in each one of those seasons. And every time the season comes and goes, our marriage is stronger. And hopefully more honoring and glorifying to the Lord. And all-season marriage, that’s what we need. Amen and amen.

Let’s pray.     

“Father, you know our hearts and you know exactly where we are. Sometimes, Lord, we understand that. We enjoy exactly where we are and that relationship. Other times, we sort of wish we were at a different level. But, Lord, before we begin to pray and ask that you take us out of this season and into the next, help us to sincerely seek all the spiritual benefit from right where we are now. Lord, you brought us to this place, this day, this month, this year. It’s not by accident that we stumbled onto this season. You brought it to us. And there are things we can learn and need to learn and need to work through together right now. Help us to have that spiritual energy to tackle those things. And we thank you, whether we’re in spring or summer, autumn or winter. We thank you that you love us and are here with us. 

Lord, it seems you grab our mate’s hand with one of yours and our hand with your other and you just lead us right through that season. And Father, if we’ve been in one of these seasons for a while, maybe it’s getting close to the time to change. 

There might be some who’ve been stuck in winter for a long time. Lord, in their spirits right now bring that refreshment of your Spirit, that spring wind that says, the season’s about to change. Give that kind of hope, that kind of encouragement.

Father, our goal is more than just peace and security. Our goal is that we’ll be pleasing to you, that we’ll be strengthening to our mate, that we’ll have that relationship that’s satisfying to our souls. Lead us to achieve that goal for the glory of Jesus Christ who is our Lord and the Lord of our mates. For we pray it in Jesus Name, Amen.”