Harry and Jenni Norsworthy

Good morning. We're the Norsworthys. My name is Harry, and this is my wife, Jenni. We've been attending Watermark Dallas since 2011 and have experienced all the changes that led to what City Bridge is today. We have two kids, Abby, who is nine, and Asher, who is five. We've also had the opportunity to host four exchange students, one of whom has been with us since July.

Over the past decade, we've served in Kids Equipping and Marriage Ministries, and our current area of service is the Community Directional Team. We've been married almost 15 years but have been together for nearly 20. We started dating during our senior year at Texas Tech and waited another four years before getting engaged while Harry was in pharmacy school in Houston.

Looking back, I wish we had married sooner. Instead of believing culture's lies that we needed to wait to have it all together, we spent most of those years before marriage dating each other poorly. While God has redeemed that part of our story, it definitely created conflict in the first years of our marriage. Harry and I both grew up in what we would consider Christian households, so a foundation of faith was instilled in us from an early age.

While we knew the gospel, neither of us really started living out our faith until much later. Despite professing a shared faith and Christian values, our relationship quickly became physical. We attended church together regularly but isolated ourselves from faithful friends who might have spoken truth into our lives concerning the sin we were living in. It was easy to look like good Christians by outwardly checking off the right boxes without being deeply known.

After graduation, we both moved to Houston, where our relationship continued progressing, but our church attendance declined as we allowed our busy schedules to take priority. Church also shined a light on our sin, so it was easier to pull away than to wrestle with the conviction of the Holy Spirit. After nearly four years together, I realized the distance I had put between myself and God, as well as other Christ followers.

I knew we needed to make a change in our relationship, so we found a church to plug into and began surrounding ourselves with other young adults striving to live out their faith beyond Sunday mornings. For the first time, we experienced authentic Christian community. God slowly chipped away at some of the sin we were stuck in, both individually and together.

After five long years of dating, we made it to the altar in August 2010. That year, we moved to a new city where Harry began his career. We struggled to find friends and a church, and I was also unemployed. Harry had a unique schedule, working seven 12-hour days in a row, followed by seven days off. His off weeks were filled with lots of time together.

However, the weeks he worked created loneliness and resentment for me. I had left a job I loved and close friends to sit alone in an apartment every other week, isolated from my husband and other close relationships. I filled the time with shopping, exercise, and drinking. The pride, entitlement, selfishness, and unrealistic expectations I brought into our marriage caused me to see Harry's failure to love me well as an indictment on myself.

I was striving to earn the kind of love I desired, not realizing I wanted him to fill a hole in my heart that only Christ could fill. Meanwhile, I viewed marriage through the lens of my parents' relationship. I had my role, and Jenny had hers. I was very selfish and invalidating towards Jenny’s feelings, yet I expected her to love me perfectly despite my imperfections.

When conflict arose, I would retreat emotionally into isolation and often escape into pornography. The stress of our first years took a toll on our marriage. Without a church home, we lacked the security of relationships with other believers. Our situation soon drove us to move to Dallas, where we began attending Watermark.

At Watermark, we found authentic people who openly talked about struggles that were only whispered about in other churches. The messages pushed us to examine our faith. Soon after, we joined a discipleship class where I embraced the truth that God didn’t just want to save me from my sins but to lead me into a fulfilling life of obedience to Him.

This class allowed us to connect with each other while growing spiritually alongside other believers, providing the fellowship we had been missing. The disciplines we learned made an immediate impact on my life and our marriage. For the first time, I learned what it looked like to live life in relationship with Jesus, and He began changing my heart.

I quickly saw the benefit of reading my Bible, memorizing Scripture, praying, and fellowshipping with believers. Together, we learned the truth of James 1:22-25:

“Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.”

There are so many blessings that came from making those spiritual disciplines consistent habits. I now see the Bible as a plumb line that constantly brings me back to the truth about God and myself. It’s much easier to be humble, gracious, and selfless in my marriage when I see how great my sin is and how much greater His love and grace are toward me.

I experienced freedom from realizing God’s perfect love and acceptance of me is not something I have to earn. This helped me battle self-righteousness, approval-seeking, and people-pleasing. While I still struggle with pride and selfishness, God showed me that my identity is found in Him. I found joy in serving my wife and others instead of seeking to be served.

God has given us opportunities to use our story of grace to help point others to Him, including serving together in marriage and discipleship ministries and hosting exchange students as a family. Looking back, we are thankful that God grabbed hold of us early in our marriage. Having His Word and His people intimately involved in our lives has saved us from many obstacles our sinful nature would have led us toward.

Community continues to be a tool the Lord uses to conform our hearts to be more like Christ. We still face fights, trials, and temptations, but bringing these things into the light with other believers has been a gift we never knew we needed. Psalm 107:2 says,

“Let the redeemed of the Lord tell their story. ”

Without Christ, our marriage was heading down a path of bad habits, hiding, and hurt. But God has transformed it into one where we experience oneness, holiness, and the blessing of being on mission together for His glory.

If you don’t know this God, let me encourage you—He has made a way for you to be reconciled to Him through Jesus, who lived the perfect life none of us ever could so that we can have eternal and abundant life in Him. Marriage has been a part of that abundant life for us, bringing so much joy as we continue to follow Christ and walk in His ways alongside other believers. He is faithful, and He is worthy of our trust.

Thank you for allowing us to share our story.