Archive for August, 2010

Marriage: A Picture of God’s Love

August 30th, 2010

This is a guest post from my husband’s “younger uncle”, Geoff. I haven’t spent as much time with Geoff as I would like, but what little time we have spent with him and his beautiful wife, Devon, has been a deep pleasure. They are a wonderful couple who are deeply seeking God and I am excited for the future that lies ahead of them. Geoff is also sort of special to me because my wedding and the people he met there had a profound influence on his heart and were indirectly involved in leading him to make some major life changes and get into ministry. I always prayed that my wedding would be life changing for someone and Geoff was that someone. Thanks for sharing this post, Geoff! I pray that my own marriage as well as yours would always be a beautiful picture of God’s love for all who encounter it.

4155_86597503094_627823094_1842071_7986138_nI have to start off this post by saying that I am not necessarily writing out of experience. Because I have only been married a little over a year, and do not have the luxury of a 32-year marriage like my wonderful sister and previous blogger Lisa Stedman, I decided to share some thoughts that I have on the purpose and function of marriage, and the hope for my own marriage

What is so intriguing to me about marriage is what it is. There’s no doubt that if you asked 10 people what marriage is, at least 9 of them would say, “A commitment”. This is absolutely true. However, as beautiful as a lifelong commitment is and can be, if we reduce marriage down to only that, we miss out on the depth, beauty and purpose of marriage.

So if marriage is not just a commitment, then what is it? Well, to get the answer we must go to a source that defines what marriage is, the Bible. Probably one of the clearest definitions of marriage is found in Ephesians 5. Paul is writing to the church in Ephesus and speaking about this topic, and quoting the Creator of marriage Himself, he pens these words:

“’Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.”’ (Eph. 5:31, 32)

Whenever God creates something, He does it with incredible purpose and marriage is no different. In fact, I believe that marriage has one of the greatest purposes in the world. And that is to be a picture to the world of what God did for us through Jesus on the cross, and our response to that.

Stories and pictures are tools used by teachers to help the listeners understand, with even more clarity, the point of the story. God is no different, and when thinking about how to clearly portray4155_86597533094_627823094_1842077_7995748_nhow fulfilling and beautiful a relationship with Him could be, He decided to use marriage. That’s why a couple verses before Paul gives his explanation we just read, he instructs husbands to “love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her”. And that the wives, in response to the sacrifice of their husbands, should “submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.” If this is happening in a marriage, it is functioning as a picture to the rest of the world of what being in a relationship with God is like. I can’t help but think of Jesus’ words in John 17 when He says,

“The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.”

If nothing else, I hope this post serves as a reminder that there is such a beautiful purpose in our marriage that goes beyond ourselves. That if we fulfill our God-given roles in our marriages, the world might know that God sent Jesus and loves them even as He loved Him. In my opinion, there couldn’t be a more fulfilling or rewarding purpose for our marriages than this.

4155_86597133094_627823094_1842003_6622457_nGeoff Francian was married to his wife Devin in 2009. They currently live in San Diego, California. Geoff has spent the last 5 years in ministry at a local church. His passions outside of ministry include, in no particular order, both playing and watching basketball (Go Lakers!), golfing, reading, and movie nights with his wife, complete with a bottle of wine and a plate of assorted cheeses.

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5 Things I’ve Learned in 5 Years of Marriage

August 30th, 2010

One of my favorite bloggers, Vina at A Nourishing Home, recently posted a few links to articles on love and marriage. She graciously included my 5th Wedding Anniversary post. I really enjoyed reading the other links she posted and thought I’d encourage you to read them as well.

One link in particular caught my attention. It was a post called Five Marriage Tips and One Life Lesson from a couple that has also just celebrated their 5th wedding anniversary. I thought these were some great tips and loved the concept…so, I decided to steal it and put together my own list of 5 things I’ve learned in 5 years of marriage.

Here’s my list:

  1. Timing is everything. Well, maybe not everything but it is important. If you want to have a serious conversation trying to start it after a long hard day when your spouse is tired and edgy isn’t a good idea. Trying to discuss a major decision while the baby is scream is also not a good idea. If there’s stuff to be talked about TALK ABOUT IT, but find a good time to sit down together and calmly talk it through.
  2. “Encourage the positive”. That’s how my mom put it when I first got married and went complaining to her. Basically it means instead of focusing on and nitpicking at and complaining about your spouse’s imperfections (the negative), focus on and encourage and praise the good things about your spouse. It’s amazing the difference that perspective and focus can make.
  3. Share, share and share some more. Share experiences, share hobbies, share thoughts, share concerns, share worries, share about the little things that happened in your day, share life together. These little shared things bond you to each other over and over again.
  4. People fight differently, and they process feelings differently. Recognize your differences in these areas and try to meet each other half way.
  5. A marriage is a living breathing entity of its own – it grows and changes. It does NOT ever stay the same. The good, the bad and the really ugly don’t last. It won’t always be the way that it is now. There is an ebb and flow to the best and the worst marriages. Sure there are things that you can do to make the bad last longer or the good last longer, but know that no matter what no season of marriage lasts forever in its same state.

Those are my five little things I’ve learned (from personal experience) about marriage over the past five years.

What about you? What have you learned about marriage? What have you seen other people learn about marriage? I’d love to hear.

Rejoicing in the journey-
Bethany Stedman

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My Story: My Wedding Ceremony and Reception

August 28th, 2010

I have a theory about weddings: On the day of the every one’s wedding something always goes wrong. Sometimes it’s a little thing, sometimes it’s a big thing, sometimes it’s easy and quick to deal with, sometimes it’s not. My friend had the ink filled tag left on her wedding dress and found it the day of the wedding. Someone else had a bumble bee fly up their pants. Sometimes the wrong flowers come. Something is bound to happen and it’s best to expect that, roll with it, and laugh.

The whole six months leading up to my wedding my parents kept telling me that “something is going to go wrong, you just need to roll with the punches.” You’d think they were paranoid I was going to go all psycho on them by how often they told me this. I guess they know me. I have a tendency to be a bit high strung and type-A and a bit of a perfectionist. I can be pretty bossy at times and especially when I was younger I had a temper to match my first-born reputation. Funnily enough I must have taken their advice to heart, or let my husband’s laid back personality rub off on me, because I think I was really calm for the six months of planning the wedding and during our Italy wedding trip. I had a few things that I really wanted – like something besides wedding cake for desert, and a good photographer, and I pushed for those things, but other than that I pretty much said whatever and let things just happen.

I decided early on that I didn’t want to be bridezilla. I didn’t want to make my bridesmaids and everyone else do and wear a bunch of things that that didn’t want to and I didn’t want to spend more than was necessary (I mean we did go to Italy, but other than that I wanted the wedding itself to be very simple). So, I let my bridesmaids each pick their own dress and I just gave them a few requirements so that they would all look good standing together. Basically I told them the dresses had to be black and had to be about knee length and that I didn’t want any of them to have exactly the same neck-line. It worked perfectly. They each choose dresses that flattered their body, that they liked and were able to wear again.

For flowers I was pretty picky about my bouquet (I wanted to have a lot of the same flowers that were in my mothers bouquet and I wanted to use some flowers that had positive traditional meanings/symbolism). But, I kept it simple and easy with the bridesmaids and had them each just carry a single long stemmed white rose. We didn’t have center pieces on the table, I didn’t pick place settings. And I let my dad pick out the menu and food for the evening.

I did sort of get in bossy take charge mode when it came to the rehearsal. I guess the director/choreographer side of me came out. And I did have one minor melt down the day of the wedding. You see the place where we were staying had three balconies. We had planned on having the ceremony on the top balcony since it had the nicest view and then doing the reception on the second balcony since it had this beautiful 900 year old tree that I thought would be lovely to eat and dance under. The day of the wedding the chef said that he wouldn’t carry the food down the stairs to the second balcony and we would have to have the reception on the first balcony. I’ll admit I did panic a little. We had to scramble to re-plan things and move the chairs and tables and we didn’t have time to rehearse the ceremony again – hence why the music for the me entering didn’t last long enough for the longer walk down the aisle on the second balcony. My dad and I ended up walking the last bit of the aisle in silence. But, really in the end I am SO glad that we switched it around. It ended up being so beautiful to get married under the giant tree and having the reception up above was perfect too. It was really how we should have planned it all along.

There were a few other little things that didn’t go quite how I wanted them – like I should have maybe been more specific in picking out our vows since I’d really wanted the old fashioned traditional “in sickness and in health, till death us do part” vows and I guess wasn’t clear enough about that with our pastor (my wonderful brother-in-law). I also didn’t realize that the photographer would want to take some more pictures after the ceremony, which I hadn’t really wanted, but it worked out fine in the end.

There are also things that I sort of wish I had done differently now. Like at the time I was uncompromising about the fact that I didn’t want posed pictures and I specifically picked a photographer who didn’t do posed pictures. Now I sort of wish we had a few nice posed one’s with some of the family. Yes, mom, you were right.

But, overall it really was the best wedding I could have ever imagined. And in the end I got to leave married to the man I love more than anyone else in the world. It was perfect.

Here are a few pictures from the day:

J37

Getting Ready

Italy Pictures 554Walking down the Aisle

Italy Pictures 566The View From Above

J45The View from Below

J44The View from the Front

Italy Pictures 395The Reception from Above

J58Celebrating

Italy Pictures 405Leaving with my hubby (The dress I wore leaving is the same dress my mom wore leaving her wedding)

Italy Pictures 406Our Get Away Car

Rejoicing in the journey-
Bethany Stedman

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My Story: My Wedding Week

August 24th, 2010

I had the best wedding I could have ever imagined. It was my dream wedding and so much more. We rented a villa in Tuscany and spent a week there with 39 friends and family members. We literally got to party and celebrate the whole week long. We spent a few days in Rome sight-seeing. We spent a day in Florence seeing The David and enjoying my cousin dancing in the street with some of the street performers. We toured a winery and explored the Tuscan countryside. And of course we hung out by the pool at the villa and relaxed as well.


Some of my favorite memories from the week include the opera re-enactment of my husband and my relationship that my family put on, family and friends cooking together in the giant kitchen at the villa, the girls only dinner complete with marriage advice, and of course, the scavenger hunt sort of Italy Pictures 314thing we did – where we paired everyone up in groups of four or so and gave people different things they had to find and buy for our anti-pasta dinner that night. When we got back to the villa everyone had made such great finds and we had a wonderful meal. My dad got different olive oils and balsamic vinegars that had been aged for different amounts of time and we had a massive olive oil and balsamic vinegar tasting – yes, it was awesome!


Probably my favorite pre-wedding festivity though was when we went to Sienna. Most Bryan and Iof the group split up and toured around, but Bryan and I got dressed up in our wedding attire and took pictures with our very Italian photographer. It was one of the only times all week where Bryan and I really felt like we got a chance to actually talk. I felt like we got tojust wander around the city and talk and kiss and the photographer took our picture as we went. I’m sure that he gave us much more direction than that, but it felt like it was just the two of us for so much of the day.


Something else really special about that day was that it happened to be the day after the famous horse races in Sienna, so there were flags and parades everywhere honoring the winning family. The main J29square was still filled with mud from the races and there were still bleachers set up off to the side. We hadn’t known about the races or planned on any of that, but it ended up being really fun and creating a fun background for some of the pictures. We followed the parade to the end and even got our picture taken with the owner of the winning horse – that picture was in the paper the next day! So, we even got to be semi-famous in Italy.


I also loved my bachelorette party. I had the best bride’s maids ever! All six of them are just the coolest ladies ever and we had such a blast talking and giggling and playing truth or dare. There was of Italy Pictures 982course some drinking, and lots of dessert, and even a little skinny dipping in the pool. It was so much fun to just relax with my girls before all the wedding festivities began.


The great thing about having a week with all the wedding guests doing all these things together was that by the end of the week everyone was so comfortable with each other. A lot of people had known each other before the week began, but there were also a lot of people who didn’t. By the end of the week it felt like we were all family. Because of that at the wedding there wasn’t much “his” side and “her” side separation. We’d all gotten to know each other. It really felt like throughout the week Bryan’s friends and family became my friends and family and my friends and family became his friends and family.


Having a weeklong celebration also meant that well… we got a week long celebration! Instead of feeling like we put in all this planning for ONE party we got to feel like the party just kept going. We got to work up to the wedding, each day celebrating a little more until the big event at the end. I liked that. It really made it last and made it all the more special.


Well, that’s the week leading up to my wedding… up next: the ceremony and reception.

Rejoicing in the journey-
Bethany Stedman

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From the Trenches: Scott and Karen Nelson

August 22nd, 2010

Today I want to share with you a couple that is very important to me… My Parents. My parent’s relationship has shaped my view of marriage in so many ways. My prayer from the time I was very young was always that my marriage would be at least as good as my parents. They have the one of the best marriage relationships of anyone I know. So, I was very excited to interview them and share their insight with all of you. I had a great time interviewing them and feel like I even learned some things I didn’t know about them. They also shared some very helpful insight into marriage.

The quality on this video is not that good since it was taken in the car on the way to visit my grandmother in Tuscan, Arizona. Anyone who knows my parents will not be at all surprised by the fact that a drive to Tuscan was the only time we could get around to this interview – my parents own a company and lead VERY busy lives. But, I think this video is definitely worth the watch even with the poor lighting and sound, and the fact that you only see my dad’s head from the side.

I will also warn you that the video is very long – about 23 minutes. But, again I totally feel this is worth the watch. The more into it we got the more little tips and insights my parents shared.

I hope you all enjoy this video interview as much as I enjoyed doing it!

Thanks again, mom and dad, for doing this interview for me and sharing about your marriage! And thank you for the wonderful example of marriage that you have set for me throughout the years. I love you!

Rejoicing in the journey -
Bethany Stedman

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