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Guess what, guys, yesterday the hubs and I celebrated our nine-year wedding anniversary. NINE. I realize it's not a golden or silver year or anything, but, darn it. Nine years sounds like a whole heckofalot more than eight. Amen? Last night we gorged ourselves with Chicken Bellagio and Red Velvet Cheesecake on our first child-free date in a year, while recalling the past few years of life together.Me: "Nine years? What the heck happened?"
Hubs: "We blinked."
Me: "Yeah. Yeah, that must be it."
I mean...when you have four children, two houses, a slew of jobs, about twenty-five cars and then start your own businesses whilst digging in your heels to make it all sync up, time has a way of passing quickly. Very quickly.
Though the years have seemingly escaped us without notice, I can look back and see where we've grown and learned a lot in that time. Following six years of dating - including 10 months of engagement - we got married at age 22. After dating someone for six years, you kind of figure the expectations for marriage and doing life together will be clear. Smooth sailing, right?
Guess what.
There's still plenty to learn, and screw up. In fact, I can only speak for myself here, but I've learned more about marriage in years seven and eight than all those preceded. How? I took my focal point off of the world's expectations and locked it in on Christ, and what he expects from me as HIS daughter and my husband's wife and my kids' mom. I've been taking more Bible time, more prayer time, more praise time, and more repentance time. As my daughter's very wise kindergarten teacher told her at the end of the school year, "if you don't read your Bible, you won't grow." So simple, so true.
It's only through Christ's infallible grace and lordship that we can show selflessness, love, submissiveness, tenderheartedness, a quiet spirit and joy in all things (good and bad) to our husbands, ladies. These things don't come naturally to our crooked hearts. Our innate rottenness can be overcome by Him and we can be made new! It's only through grace that we can realize contentment and joy when things don't go our way, and also when they do. It's only through grace that we can realize our husbands are imperfect beings, such as ourselves, and not put on earth to be our saviors, our little gods. It's only through grace that our marriages can grow and prosper and that we can realize what a blessing each day is, knowing that we are never promised our next breath. The finest blessing yet, though, is to realize that none of this depends on OUR ability in this fallen world; Christ is sovereign and in all things, He is good, very good, and we must trust in Him.
Verses to reflect on:
Happy anniversary!
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