The sixth and final episode of The Diaspora Marriage, a Voice of Covenant series on building a Christ-centered home when you are walking between two cultures.

In this series closer, Micheline Nelson teaches on the empty nest, the season most marriages quietly fear. For twenty, twenty-five, sometimes thirty years, the home has had the noise of children, and then the last child leaves, and the house goes suddenly quiet. Our culture calls that quiet loss. She reframes it as a beginning, the chapter where a couple remembers why they said yes in the first place:

1. Let the quiet be honest. When the last child leaves, one spouse may feel relief and the other grief, and both are allowed. Name the loss out loud, together, instead of papering over it (Ecclesiastes 3)

2. Meet the person, not just the parent. After decades as mother and father, rediscover the friend you married. This is my beloved, and this is my friend (Song of Songs 5:16)

3. The nest is empty because you are being sent. God is not retiring you, He is re-deploying you, with free hands, a tested marriage, and a faith to carry across the diaspora distance to grandchildren far away (Psalm 92:14; 2 Timothy 1:5)

Plus, what our culture gets right and wrong about the empty nest, two Haitian proverbs ("chak jou pa dimanch," every day is not Sunday, and "piti piti zwazo fè nich li," little by little the bird builds its nest), and one challenge to carry into your week.

For empty-nesters and long-married couples, especially Haitian and Francophone Christian families in the diaspora, and for the younger couples and singles who want to see the whole road ahead.

Learn more at ecorelationships.com.