A Special Thanks…

Today I want to extend my sincere love and thanks to my most faithful encourager and my darling husband for ten years of marriage. My husband, who I like to call on the blog, The Ministry Papa, is a special person to have put up with me for so long.

My husband is a wonderful person. I admire him for loving others and always making them feel welcome and valued. I love him for always saying to me when I approach him asking for forgiveness, “I already forgave you,”because he has tenderly already chosen to overlook my wrongs. I love how he tells me that if I die then he will never want to marry again, even though I encourage him it would be okay. He really needs a helpmeet! Trust me, I know.

I love how when I am not self-confident he has uplifting words to say to help me feel secure. He is an assuring friend, an adventure waiting to happen, sometimes a magnet for bodily injury but that’s something that keeps us laughing. He is concerned about our life and future, wants to follow and obey God so that we do not have more years of heartache if we can help it.

He is the fun-loving father that delights to wrestle on the floor with our kids and take them to do things with him. He is careful in the things that he is good at, like painting, preaching, and the joyful way he leads the song service in our church. I love the sparkle in his eyes when he sees me. He is my dear, my darling one!

On a Side Note…Did you know that darling means, “my only, as not to be replaced”? It does, and that is why I call him that.

Time…

10 years is:

• 3,652 days,

• 87,648 hours,

• 5,258,800 minutes,

• 315,532,800 seconds

We have not been exactly in the same place for each of those days, hours, minutes, or seconds, (thankfully) but we have been considered “one flesh” for that long. It is a sobering thought to think of all those times shared add up to so great an amount of time.

Half of our marriage was spent as some of the most stressful years of my life as we lived our earlier days working, having our boys and finishing Bible College. The last half have been spent serving in our first ministry together and they have allowed us to have a “normal” schedule and be able to communicate so much better than the years beforehand.

You can read more about our earlier years of marriage on a guest post that I wrote here.

Love…

Love is an interesting thing. I cannot express any thoughts or ideas that are new in the world about the subject but I am thankful that I have it and through God our love is richer and deeper. In serving in the calling of God’s will for our lives it has made it at times more complicated but overall more meaningful because I believe that it will have resulted in eternal gain for God’s glory. Heaven will show something of the love we had as we served the Lord together in our church, gave money for worldwide missions together, and most importantly taught our children about salvation side by side.

Learning…

You may notice that I write more often about ministry and motherhood than I do about marriage. In so many ways I feel like I struggle in this area of my life most, so that is why I titled this “10 Years of Marriage and Learning.” We are still learning how to love and serve each other. Lord willing, we will always be learning to love and serve each other.

Someone said in a sermon once that marriage makes you learn how to be more like Christ… and I think it makes it clear when you’re not being Christlike at all.

Marriage has stretched me, humbled me, called me to forgive more times than my fleshly heart wanted to. It has taught me forbearance, patience, to keep my yap shut and wait for God to work in my husband’s heart instead of trying to constantly be the pushing force of change in my husband’s life. It has revealed that although I have a wonderful companion, that God is the One who really knows my thoughts and feelings every day and He is the one that will help me change MY heart more than his to help make this marriage what He wants it to be. Being married to my husband has made me a better person.

I won’t lie, neither of us has been a picture perfect example of a wife or husband every day of these 10 years, but I Iove how that no matter what God has helped us moment by moment get through the turbulent seas and teaches us each time that true love covers a multitude of sins.

I Peter 4:8 And above all things have fervent charity among yourselves: for charity shall cover the multitude of sins.

To My Husband…

I love you more today than I did when we got married, it sounds so cliché but it’s true. I pray that the Lord will help us to be the best parents that our children deserve, special lovers, and obedient servants to Him for the rest of our lives! I love you, my cornier than cornbread, cheesier that Giovani’s cheese bread, mocha-latte’, one in a million babe! I hope you know that. ~Your Girl