9 Christmases

What an exciting journey life is - It’s full of fun, joy, laughter, tears, pain, heartache, peace, crazy people and occasionally a flash mob. I am still missing the flash mob, but I haven't given up hope. I really love my life. One of the best parts is I really love the person I am sharing it with. In a few weeks Elijah and I will share our 9^th Christmas together, and on New Year’s Day we will celebrate our 9^th wedding anniversary. Our journey is one of my favorite testimonies of the craz-amazingness of God.

I am sharing this to testify to the unmatchable power of God, and also as an honor to my husband for loving me and caring for me, for driving me crazy and making me mad, for giving me adorable children and awkward drive-thru experiences – he is my favorite.

I think most people know our “how we met” story so I won’t go into all those mushy details. Let’s just start on wedding day – the day where two young immature people who don’t really know each other at all get married and think everything is going to be perfect and blissful.

So yeah, not so much. Are you married? If so, I’m sure you rolled your eyes just now. It might have just been an emotional rolling of the eyes, not the actual physical rolling of the eyes. Well how should I know? I should know? I am not sitting right next to you, am I? Oh, so I should just know what is going on inside of you – I should just read your mind? No, I didn’t assume that’s what you were trying to say. I think you might have some issues you need to work on. No, we are not talking about my issues right now, we are talking about yours and you need to deal with this. Right now. This way. Here let me help you (grab person’s neck tightly and shake vigorously).

Sorry about that. Moving on.

We quickly discovered that everything was exactly how we expected it to be, PERFECT AND BLISSFUL… until year 3 when we couldn’t talk about ANYTHING without it turning into an enormous, un-resolvable argument and realized we had been in denial. Well, me – I had been in denial and packed on some serious emotional pounds. I probably ate an entire ‘whoa is me’ pizza all by myself every night.

Needless to say our first three years of marriage and getting to know one another was not a piece of cake. Elijah spent most of his time frustrated at me, and I spent most of my time ‘hurt’ by him. There was a Noah’s Ark sized gap of misunderstanding that floated between us, and I had allowed my expectations of what a good marriage should look like cause me to crawl into a tiny hole, avoid reality and shut down. Not a good place to be. Toward the end of year 3, I became angry – angry at Elijah for being a jerk and angry at myself for not believing in divorce. By this time, I had come to believe some serious things were screwy in the head of my horrible husband. I remember lying in bed next to him, scooted over as close to the edge as possible thinking, “I need to figure out a way to just harden myself over so I can survive the next 60 years. And we are never going to be able to have children together. That would be terrible.” I spent many nights emotionally reliving all the ways he had done me wrong. I despised him.

At this point, I had let go of all of my fantastical expectations and thrown in the towel on the ideal marriage. This meant that I no longer kept silent. It was an ugly season for me (imagine HomeStar Runner voice saying, “The Ugly One!”), and believe me, I have since repented! But the Lord used that time to do something amazing – I grew a pair. During the first three years I didn’t know how to stand up to someone who was merely confident. I was so insecure and afraid of confrontation that I stopped speaking the moment I felt intimidated. Every conversation ended the same way… without a good ending. The ugliness of my emotional puberty was me taking the lid off and letting years of my ‘whoa is me’ pizza spill out. My apologies for the visual.

As I was pillaging through my ugly season collecting awful accusations and demerits against Elijah, I had a moment. A God moment. A parting of the clouds kind of moment.

I was driving home from work and a mental post-it randomly popped into my head – aren’t good wives usually for their husbands? Don’t they usually stand up for him and come to his defense when he is being slandered behind his back? …Oh sweet Jesus, I am the one doing the slandering. BOOM. My mind immediately started to grab at whatever bits of self-justification it could find. “But he... But I didn’t… but he shouldn’t have… If he wasn’t so…” ugh. Pointless. There had to be something off somewhere. So I collected all my awful accusations, all my prized demerits, and presented them to God and asked, “God, are all these things I am believing about Elijah true?”

It is possible that all the people driving on the road with me heard the enormous bolt. It was the first time I heard the Voice of the Lord in this way, like a roaring Lion, rolling on the thunder, BOOMING through time and space to break through my existence and set before me the gentle answer that changed me.

“NOOOOOOOOOOO!”

It was almost desperate sounding, as if God himself had been holding his breath waiting and waiting for me to finally ask the question. It rocked my world. My world was a lie.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

It took some time to release the poison. Even while writing this the Lord reminded me of some things I had said to myself that I needed to repent for. I didn’t really understand how to walk through forgiveness completely back then. I am thankful that the Lord journeys with us and brings us out of the ‘muck and mire’ as we yield. I YIELD TO YOU JESUS!!!

Year 4 the Lord gave me some assignments – ways that he wanted me to invest in Elijah. I obeyed, not realizing that what he was really doing was knitting our hearts together, mending what was broken, and reviving his intent for our life together. It was a little awkward at first, but then it started to shift. The Lord showed me the truth about Elijah. He showed me who he really was, how gentle and pure his heart really was for me. He showed me the beautiful gift I had been given; certainly an honor I didn’t deserve. He showed me grace amazing.

 Several months and lots of details later, it had crept up on me. I remember walking up to Olive Garden and almost buckling over on the sidewalk, weeping. I ran into an invisible glittering wall of gratitude. It was our 5^th anniversary – and I was so happy. WE were so happy. I could never have imagined it. I was overcome with honor that the Lord would choose me to be his wife; humility over how low the Lord had to go to save me from its ruin; thankfulness for the past and how God redeemed something so hopeless; joy abounding in love and fulfillment of my dreams. What an amazing painting to come from a thousand bi-polar brush strokes. The most incredible art I've ever experienced.

Every year when our anniversary comes around I am reminded again of Gods amazing redemption. In my heart there is an alter built to the Lord, a mile stone that I pass and stop to see HIM and all HE has done for me, to give thanks and worship him for being an awesome God, for saving me over and over again from my own way. It is a sweet time for me.

Fast forward to year 9 with two babies and even more happiness and joy – I’d say the ideal marriage cannot be defined in time. Wherever there is covenant, ideal is always Gods intent. From the highest to the lowest points, the brush strokes of God create the most beautiful picture.

…Don’t get me wrong, I still have to forgive the turd for falling asleep by 9 every night, using up all the paper towels and leaving his shoes under the couch…

Thank you, babes, for being patient with me and choosing to continue in love for me. Thank you for warring with me into our future past, and our future future (: Thank you for living in time with me NOW and making our world beautiful.  

Happy holiday of happiness my Love! I.AM.SO.HAPPY! XOXO

 And to all of you who read this, I pray an extra measure of love and fulfillment, warmth and peace inside you during this glorious holiday season.