His Will is Our Hiding Place: Marriage Wisdom in Corrie Ten Boom's Memoir
/DOMINIKA RAMOS
My husband and I celebrated seven years of marriage in May, and on my wedding day if you had asked me what our lives would look like seven years in, I would have predicted that we'd be a lot more settled and a lot more competent at marriage and parenting.
By seven years, we'd definitely have things figured out.
PHOTOGRAPHY: HER WITNESS PHOTOGRAPHY
I couldn't have anticipated just how exhausting the work of parenting small children is (let it be noted, I couldn't have anticipated the joys of it either). I couldn't have fathomed the world of invisible special needs we're now navigating for one of our children. I couldn't have foreseen all the career swerves we'd take and the consequential life-transition-whiplash we'd find ourselves in again and again. And I think I'd be surprised by just how far we've still got to go in learning how to love each other and our children well.
Sometimes it feels like we could have strategized our lives a little better.
I feel this particularly in regards to the winding career paths we've taken, but if I'm honest, on the hardest days at home with small kids, I've wondered if we should have waited a little longer to start a family or spaced our kids out a little more.
I found a lot of wisdom and solace in my own life in Corrie Ten Boom's memoir The Hiding Place, in which she describes her and her family's involvement in the Dutch resistance during WWII.
The title refers to the hidden room in their home where Corrie, her sister, and her father sheltered Jewish men and women from persecution. The title also refers to God's will. Corrie and her sister, Betsie were ultimately sent to a concentration camp where her sister died from illness. Corrie, herself, was released due to a clerical error. Had she stayed, she would have been killed with the other women in her age group a week later.
Corrie wonders at the timing of all this--that she is saved and her sister is spared a worse death than the one she endured. She writes,
"There are no “ifs” in God’s kingdom. I could hear [Betsie's] soft voice saying it. His timing is perfect. His will is our hiding place. Lord Jesus, keep me in Your will! Don’t let me go mad by poking about outside it."
At another point Corrie reflects on how startling it is that these world events came crashing in on their quiet lives and required them to choose between living in safety or to protect innocent life. She doesn't see the two disparate circumstances as unconnected: "this is what the past is for! Every experience God gives us, every person He puts in our lives is the perfect preparation for a future that only He can see."
Corrie's words and witness brings me comfort in my marriage. Her prayers have become my prayers. Even in a life free of the kind of dangers that Corrie and family faced, we still must make choices and live with those choices without wondering about the what ifs.
Standing here seven years in, I can't know what our future holds no matter how much expert strategizing we do for it, but I do know that if we have discerned well, then Corrie's words are true: "that the experiences of our lives, when we let God use them, become the mysterious and perfect preparation for the work He will give us to do."
