Marriage: Doing the Right Thing

Kengor_Catholic_Doing the right thing 2013_102813

Natasha was a student at my college and also a member of my wife’s aerobics class. She was an impressive young woman—single, smart, a good head on her shoulders, a devout Christian who strived to live a moral life and do the right thing. But like all of us, the right choices aren’t always made, and the pastor’s daughter got pregnant.

Embracing her pro-life roots, Natasha chose to do the right thing. She had the child, a joyful little girl.

Throughout that pregnancy, and for the first two years of her daughter’s life, Natasha came to our home three days a week, helping with our youngest and bringing along her daughter. Discerning God’s plan, Natasha ultimately took a full-time job at a Crisis Pregnancy Center, where she devoted her days to convincing pregnant, unmarried girls to keep their babies. She did the right thing.

Then came something else unexpected. One of Natasha’s best friends from college, a young mother of three, tragically died in her sleep from an unknown congenital heart defect. The husband was at work, and two of the toddlers blissfully played near their unresponsive mom for hours while the baby cried in the crib.

It was very sad. The widowed husband, Mark, struggled with his three little ones to put their lives together, to figure out God’s plan—while Natasha did the same.

Eventually, Natasha and Mark got together. They started dating. They prayed. They continued in a wholly Christian way.

And then, in the fall of 2013, in a little country church in Western Pennsylvania, Natasha and Mark married, their families at their side, including their four children, all now one with them. It was probably the most heartfelt, truly blessed Christian wedding I ever attended.

In America in 2013, marriage is in a shambles. When men and women aren’t cheating or divorcing, they are trying to redefine marriage.

The life of Natasha, however, and her new husband, gives hope. Sometimes, in some places, people are still doing the right thing.