Benefits of Putting God First in Marriage

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Myrtle Alegado:

When you get married as newlyweds, you have goals, right, that you want to accomplish, whether they be advancing in your career or buying a home, traveling or even starting a family. In this episode, we’re going to talk to a newlywed couple who has seen the benefits of putting God first in their marriage.

Welcome to Happy Life, a podcast brought to you by INC Media that aims to help newlyweds navigate through the first years of marriage. I’m Myrtle Alegado and I’ve been married to my husband Paul since 1999.

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Inspiration to make your marriage thrive, you’re listening to Happy Life.

Myrtle Alegado: According to verywellmind.com, a top priority for newlyweds should be keeping the romance alive as mentioned in Dr. Houston’s study. Other than that, during the first year of marriage, couples need to settle many things, including how to allocate and handle money.

On lifehack.org, they said that goals will help your marriage to thrive, and a couple of things to prioritize our financial goals, goals for your relationship as well as family health goals.

The newlyweds I’d like to introduce you all to are Christine and Marc, all the way from Sydney, Australia. Christine is a friend of mine and my colleague at INC Media. Good day, Marc and Christine, how are things in the Land of Oz?

Christine Afenir: Hi, Myrtle.

Marc Afenir: Good day, Myrtle. I’m loving the Aussie accent there. Well done.

Myrtle Alegado: I’m so glad I thought you were going to cringe and say how horrible because, you know, I’m really bad at accents. But I thought I’d give it a shot.

Marc Afenir: Let’s just say that it’s good that you’re not recording video right now.

Myrtle Alegado:  I cry, I cry. Well, how are you both doing? You know, down there, I think the weather is opposite from here in North America. Right?

Marc Afenir: It is actually. It’s winter here right now. So you know everything in Australia being upside down compared to the northern hemisphere. So whatever you have, we have in reverse so yeah, but we’re doing well. And we’re keeping warm during lockdown so.

Myrtle Alegado: Oh, still in lockdown. Wow. Okay. Well, glad to hear you’re doing well. For those who don’t know you, would you mind sharing a little bit about how you two met?

Christine Avenir: So, funny story. We actually met at the KADIWA formal, a Church event that was happening in London in 2008. We actually didn’t interact with each other. We were there with kind of our own friends. And yeah, Marc traveled all the way from Australia to be there as well.

Marc Afenir: Yeah, that was also a very last minute trip for me. So I was working full time at an ad agency and kind of asked my boss who was also from the UK. And I think that kind of helped me get over the line to get my leave approved. But I told her I was going to London for about a week. 

And we met there, but we didn’t really talk. So that was like she said back in 2008. So, it was close to a decade later that we started talking to each other. Like we’ve heard of each other, because we’ve worked in media. So Christine’s been in INC Media since I think 2011 and I started around that time helping the bureau here in Sydney. She was in San Francisco. I’ve heard her name thrown around, be it she was a producer for some shows. But it wasn’t until, like, 2017 that we started messaging each other. 

Myrtle Alegado: Did you actually meet at that formal or you just found out later that you were both there at the same time?

Marc Afenir: So for Christine, she kind of knew who were at the table. But I was, I kind of have a very long memory so…

Christine Afenir: Full disclosure, I didn’t know his name. I think I remembered later on, that somebody from Australia was there. There was only one person from Australia there. So when that was mentioned, I was like, oh, that guy. I think we only were conscious of each other’s existence afterwards.

Myrtle Alegado: And I know you kind of touched on it, Christine, but let me just explain that KADIWA is the Christian Family Organization for those 18 [years old] and up who are unmarried inside the Church Of Christ. So the formal in London was organized for that group, which is really neat that they had those kinds of events for the youth to be able to meet each other.

Marc Afenir: Yeah. And you had basically a lot of people from all over Europe. It was a European KADIWA formal but you know, I think…

Christine Afenir: We crashed.

Marc Afenir: Yeah, we crashed. There were people all over the world who found out about it and they thought, oh, cool, great opportunity to be in London and meet all these other single people in the Church, so why not? And even had one crazy Aussie there who traveled 24 hours by plane just to be there for a week.

Myrtle Alegado: That’s how long it takes to fly to London, 24 hours?

Marc Afenir: Oh yeah, a good 24 hours.

Myrtle Alegado: Wow, I had no idea. So Christine, obviously your relationship progressed, and the two of you got married in April of 2019. We heard on what some couples prioritize in their marriage. Can you tell me what it was like to plan your wedding while being across the globe from each other? You know, what was important to you both to put first?

Christine Afenir: I think we really experienced the true definition of long distance. Because usually, long distance like you’re in another state, in the United States, or, you know, a different time zone. He was in a different country, in a different hemisphere. Like it was very hard to find a common time where we were both awake, and conscious to even talk to each other. So to plan a wedding. You know, I have family in the United States, we have family in the Philippines. He has family in Germany, he has family in Australia.

So we were trying to find a place—a place to have the wedding but also, you know, the discussion came to where are we going to go, to live our life as a married couple. But it wasn’t that hard, because he knew that God comes first. And I work for the Church in INC Media. We both wanted to wait for word whether I could continue my duty in Australia. And if that was the case, then we’d move there. But if not, then Marc would move to San Francisco, where INC Media Headquarters is.  I think it was a difficult conversation, but it was an easy conversation, because we both knew that God came first. I’m very happy that he didn’t make it any harder than it had to be.

Marc Afenir: I think that’s the constant in our relationship. It’s your guiding light when you come to some very, very difficult decisions. When you look at mine and Christine’s case, there’s a lot of things that we needed to decide on, you know. I had a career going on here in Sydney. So, do we move to San Francisco, or do we stay here in Sydney, or things like that. Even the wedding, at some point we even decided to have it at San Francisco or even Germany, because our family was all over the world. Like I mentioned before, when you have that guiding light, when you’re both reliant on how God steers you, it makes things easier.

Christine Afenir: Oh yeah, the answers are there.

Marc Afenir: Yeah, the answers are there for you. You really do have to trust the process. To any ordinary person, this might look difficult, but when you have God on your side, when you put God as the priority, and when you have that trust, then things fall into place. It was remarkable seeing things just fall into place.

Myrtle Alegado: So you said when you have that guiding light, everything else, you know, flows and kind of comes easily after that. So how did you put your trust in God with this experience with making your decisions and where you were going to move to and where you were even going to have the wedding?

Marc Afenir: Well, most importantly, in order to have that guidance by God, you need to ask God through prayer. Members of the Church Of Christ, we’re encouraged to pray and to have that relationship with God.

Just even at the start of our relationship, I suggested to Christine, “Okay, look, there’s just a lot of things that we need to figure out right now. How about we hold devotional prayers together?” So, basically just having those devotional prayers, it’s a challenge for us, because normally you’d be together physically and be inside the place of worship, you know, in a chapel, you’re kneeling down and you’re praying together. But for us, the challenge was that, you know, we’re like,  what 7000 kilometers apart, and there’s also the time zone difference.

Myrtle Alegado: And how many hours was that time difference between Sydney and San Francisco?

Marc Afenir: So how many hours is that? Like okay so…

Christine Afenir: I think seventeen.

Marc Afenir: So Christine would be finishing up her workday, and I would be starting mine. So I’d be scrambling to get to work. So yeah, we just had to come up with a schedule that suited us. So one