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.

The fifth 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 episode, Micheline Nelson teaches on the long middle of marriage: the years past the babies and the honeymoon, when the careers are demanding, the parents back home are aging, and the romance has gone quiet. Drawing on Scripture and years of walking alongside long-married couples, she reframes the season almost nobody talks about:

1. Do not mistake tired for broken. A quiet season is not a dead season, and weariness is the mark of long, faithful love, not failure (Galatians 6:9)

2. Prayer for the exhausted. On the nights you have no words, the Spirit himself is already interceding for your marriage (Romans 8:26)

3. You were never meant to do this alone. Find the older couples who have walked the road ahead of you, and let them in (Titus 2)

Plus what our culture gets right and wrong about the long haul of marriage, two Haitian proverbs for endurance and community ("dèyè mòn gen mòn," behind mountains there are mountains, and "men anpil, chay pa lou," many hands make the load light), and one challenge to carry into your week.

For long-married couples, especially Haitian and Francophone Christian families in the diaspora, and for anyone in the quiet, unglamorous middle years, where covenant is quietly forged.

Learn more at ecorelationships.com.

The fourth 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 episode, Micheline Nelson teaches on parenting children who are growing up between two languages and three cultures: the child who speaks English better than Creole or French, who knows the American Christmas carols better than the hymns your grandmother sang. Drawing on Scripture and years of walking alongside diaspora families, she walks through what every Haitian and Francophone Christian parent needs to hear:

1. You are not failing, you are translating a spiritual inheritance across generations, just as Timothy's faith was handed down through his grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice (2 Timothy 1:5)

2. How faith is actually passed down: keeping the heritage-language door open, and family devotion that starts small and sticks (Deuteronomy 6; Psalm 78)

3. Discipline where three cultures collide: keeping the honor your culture taught you, and laying down the harshness that was never Scripture (Ephesians 6:1-4)

Plus, what our culture gets right and wrong about raising children in the faith, a Haitian proverb for the long work of parenting ("piti piti zwazo fè nich li," little by little the bird builds its nest), and one challenge to carry into your week.

For married couples raising children in the diaspora, especially Haitian and Francophone Christian families, and for any parent trying to pass on faith in a culture that is not their own.

Learn more at ecorelationships.com.