I rarely allow my mind to recall the events surrounding the worst day of our married life. The day our son died.

Today I will go there with the hope that somebody needs to hear this message and might be helped by telling it.

I sat alone on the open staircase with a house full of grieving family and friends. Hands cupped over my face, weeping, distraught in a way I’ve never known in life.

Head hanging low I looked up to lock tear filled eyes with my wife. She quietly came to me and my grieving heart gushed out what I feared most in that moment.

“I don’t want this to destroy us.” Embracing me face to face she said, “It won’t, we won’t let it.”

That was ten years ago. In that time I cannot number the amount of times I’ve been asked if our marriage survived. Especially by pastors.

Marriage is difficult by itself but add this trial I wasn’t sure at that moment if we would be able to withstand the fire.

By grace God has kept us. It did for us wonderful things in our faith that apart from the trial we’d never had known. Things about our savior and ourselves.

By grace God has refined our faith together preserving our marriage. In this we give him thanks and praise from a joyful and healed heart.

Trials have a season and a reason. Be encouraged that these seasons are on timetable with God.

“In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” 1 Peter 1:6-7

Our faith is so valuable, so precious, that God sometimes turns up the burner in our lives to refine us, not to punish us. This is for his honor, for his praise, and for his eternal glory.

Be encouraged.

Mike — with Stacey Philo Fekete.