Here's to missing turns, and a lifetime of unflashy love.
Dear Craig, When we started on this journey so many years ago, I didn't have the slightest idea that you would be the one who asked for my forever.
And now, here we are -- two years into marriage, and every second still feels like magic. Every second was worth the wait and the fight it took to get here.
You did not propose on Valentine's Day.
No -- instead, you made me wait nine excruciating days after, and all the while, I felt like I was about to burst.
See, the February you proposed, I was smack in the middle of taking a class on counseling and marriage. We read a book about how a woman's primary ministry should be to her husband, and yeah, it was conservative to say the least, and maybe the author had taken scripture out of context on more than one occasion. But as I was writing my paper on what it meant to be that kind of wife, the only thoughts I could muster were of how I didn't just want to be a godly wife, I wanted to be your godly wife.
I still remember your boyish grin when we accidentally missed our turn, and how in the entire time I had known you, you had never missed a turn. And I remember how just enough of the day didn't go according to plan for everything to be absolutely perfect.
There was no flash mob to some Hall and Oats song, no trail marked by rose petals. You didn't even prepare a speech.
It was just you and me, and a few curious onlookers who had been walking through the park.
And on our wedding day, instead of talking about all the things love is or isn't, we chose to talk about what love does.
Lord knows, I am fearful. But I am also learning what it means to bloom.
And I know over the next ninety-nine years, there will be a lot of missed turns. There will be mountains, but there will also be valleys. There will be sickness and health, plenty and want. There will be days when we just don't feel like it. There will be days when we fight with each other, but there will be a lifetime of fighting for each other.
Our first act as husband and wife was to take communion together.
For I had received from the Lord that which I have also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus in the night in which He was betrayed took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, "This is My body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of Me." In the same way He took the cup also after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me." For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until He comes. (1 Corinthians 11:23-26 NASB)
Even in this, these final moments before the cross, Christ gave thanks. And there is no cross we could bear that He did not carry first on our behalf.
There is nothing flashy about this kind of love, the kind that bears burdens and makes the hard choice: the choice to serve and die a thousand deaths to self. But oh, the joy. Because at the end of the day -- at the end of every day -- there is no one else in the world that I would rather have beside me on this adventure.