Soul-to-Soul by Cheryl Polote-Williamson

Author:Cheryl Polote-Williamson [Polote-Williamson, Cheryl]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-02-05T00:00:00+00:00

Friends, How Many of Us Have Them?

CHERYL AND RUSSELL WILLIAMSON

“There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

—John15:13(NLT)

It may be hard to imagine willingly laying down your life for anyone as an expression of love. Really consider the possibility that you or another person would, without reservation or hesitation, step in to surrender your life in place of another person’s—a friend. The current cultural climate indicates that it’s really more about self and self-preservation. You only have to turn on your TV, pick up your mobile device, or walk out your front door and within moments you or someone you know can be caught taking a selfie. It really appears that the environment is trending toward the individual as opposed to the collective.

The growing rise of individualism doesn’t seem to bode well for marriage. As we know, a marriage is a union of two people, which under most circumstances is intended to be a lifelong partnership. That’s certainly what my wife, Cheryl, and I felt when we decided to get married. We felt with every fiber of our being that God had brought us together and it would be a lifelong engagement. We both made a contract, a covenant, to be husband and wife until death do us part. Now, if you are married and reading this you surely have given the making of this contract great consideration, at least I hope you have. However, if you are single with a desire to marry or marry again, really pause and think about that binding agreement.

Cheryl and I have been in a relationship for 28 years and married for 26 of those years. It’s because we became friends first that our marriage has endured for more than a quarter of a century. Being friends was not an expressed intention in the beginning as the two of us were getting to know one another. I mean, I don’t recall us ever having a conversation saying, “Let’s just be friends” or “We should start as friends and see where it goes.” Candidly, it was the guiding hand of the Lord. I share that as a lesson learned from reflecting on who I was and what I was looking for during that period of my life.

At the age of 23, my personal plan was to wait until I reached the ripe old age of 30 before I set out on the journey to find my wife. Previously, I had a high school sweetheart and we discussed getting married at some point in the future after she and I graduated from college. I really thought she was the woman that I would marry one day; however, she had different plans which she surprised me with just before I graduated from college. It’s funny as I reflect on that now and realize that in those years you think you have it all figured out; but, you know little to nothing about life. Yet, there is a great joy in the ability to think that everything you desire to happen in life will happen.

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