Jarrett and Katrina McCain on The Pursuit of Christ’s Perfect Love for Imperfect People
Jarrett and Katrina McCain join the podcast this month and share parts of their marriage and own up to the imperfections in their own hearts, life and marriage. As Christians, we are not here to promote perfection. It’s quite the opposite, we are living vessels to promote Christ’s perfect love found mercifully through God using imperfect people to tell others about His perfect, astounding love. Katrina shares more from her newly released book titled Seven Years of Love: For The Woman Who Desires to Love Well with Jarrett adding what he’s learned of what it means to love well but honestly sharing, he doesn’t do that perfectly most days. Some of the chapter are titled: Building Better Love, The Design for Marriage, The Right One, Love Who He Loves.
Katrina and Jarrett have been married for close to 8 years. They have two daughters and live in Charlotte, North Carolina.
testimonies
Jarrett was brought up in the church and went with his dad and grandmother. As he got older, he started drifting and not going to church like he once did. He went to college, did the college scene - drinking and participating in these things he shouldn’t have but he felt the Lord’s tug on his heart and really felt the Lord kept him through a lot of situations. One day that tug got a little too much to resist, and he decided to change his life and really start living for the Lord and turning away from those things. This happened right around the time he met Katrina.
The timing was definitely divine. Life with wife and kids hasn’t been perfect but he can say it’s been more enjoyable going through tough times and seasons knowing he can rely on the Lord.
Katrina grew up in church, both parents were ministers. She had a lot of head knowledge but didn’t really know the Lord. She shares, “My Christianity was ‘I don’t do this, I don’t do this, I don’t go there’ and then she had an opportunity open up to start modeling. She always had felt overlooked and unseen and this was a way to be seen, so she dove headfirst into the industry. She started traveling a lot and found herself trying to adapt to new places and new people and began recreating herself, compromising a lot and living a hypocritical life, making bad decisions.
She was trying to make her life choices fit her sense of godliness until the Lord brought her to a place of realization that she wasn’t really a believer, she hadn’t really ever been saved. This was a hard thing for her to accept even though she’d claimed that her entire life…she said “ I do know your way is the best way” and she wanted that. Jesus started changing things, moving her to Greensboro completely alone after trying so hard to make so many friends. He was replacing people and leading to her to more authentic friendships which led her to Jarrett. She noticed how he had a hunger for the Lord that she didn’t recognize. Seeing someone who knew nothing about the Bible yet how genuine and authentic he was is what drew her to him as a friend and then as her husband.
“I want to love the Lord like Jarrett does, with a genuine heart like that”.
He had a very big spiritual influence on her. She didn’t know what it meant to be vulnerable with God until she saw Jarrett living that out. She saw him growing and it was happening because of his pursuit of Christ. And then they started growing in Christ together and then in love together, and then they got married.
loving well & loving sincerely
Jarrett is honest in saying this looks like putting your spouse first, although he’s not perfect in that. “When things aren’t going the way I think they should be going, it’s still putting her first.”
“As husbands we are called to love, in spite of…” — Jarrett
Katrina says, “Christ has loved me though I don’t deserve it and this motivates me to love well as unto Christ.”
She was recently reading through Romans 9 — how love must be sincere, to love sincerely means there are no strings attached to this sincerity. Katrina shares, “When I’m tired I still consider you, when I feel you didn’t notice something, I still ways to celebrate you, on our good bad and worst days I’m here. Sometimes we’ll have to have hard conversations or to point things out in one another and we’re both benefiting emotionally and spiritually because love is being given sincerely.”
Katrina also shares that they read all the books and took all the pre-marital counseling and are like, “Oh yeah this is going to be great” but then you’re married, and the daily sets in and you wonder, “Where’s the mariachi bands? Where are all the surprises and glitter?” She had to realize this marriage isn’t about me having a good time and him fulfilling all these unrealistic expectations.
“I could focus on me or on us and living this out. And I can be intentional about pouring into him or surprising him and give him grace just like I expect him to give to me.”
“The love of Christ doesn’t look emotional at all, this has nothing to do with my feelings but everything to do with my resolve to love him like Christ loves me” — Katrina
the books
Katrina has written two books one being titled, Beyond Being Good: Seeking Christ's Perfection for Our Imperfect Hearts and the other, Seven Years of Love: For the Woman Who Desires to Love Well . In episode 28, Katrina and Jarrett share a real story, one that she shares in her book, where she felt she was encouraging and motivating him toward something he shared with her that was on his heart to do and Jarrett shares how her “encouragement” began to feel more like nagging. Katrina shares the lesson she learned in that season of their marriage.
“As a wife, you might see beyond the moment for your husband but it’s not our job to push him into the moment that we see for him. It’s our job to pray so the Lord can prepare their hearts for His timing, His season for them.”
She shares this was such a huge lesson as a wife, and as a child of God. That “Prayer moves. I can’t move I can’t change him.”
She closes with some additional thoughts on what she shares in her first book, “We will never be perfect this side of Heaven but that never disqualifies us from the perfect love of God.”
Styled wedding photography: Monisa J. Photography