...on December 22, 2004, I went to see a movie at Festival Bay in Orlando with some friends from high school. There I met Mason and knew immediately that he was going to be my husband. I was on Christmas break from the University of Florida after my first semester of college. I had been keeping my eyes open for Mr. Right ever since graduating high school, but none of the guys I had met while working that summer at Disney World or taking classes in Gainesville had fit the bill. I realize that might sound insane to expect to meet the man of my dreams right out of high school, but I did fully expect it.
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| Summer 2005 |
A few individuals discouraged me from marrying my first love. Two in particular that I'm thinking of, male friends in college, both told me something along the lines of "you can't expect to win the World Series if you've never picked up a bat!" I'm no sports fan, but I think I understood the analogy. The idea of playing the field is central to mainstream dating philosophy. One of them told me this upon my confident declaration that I wasn't going to kiss anyone until I knew he was the man I'd marry. The other expressed the same idea when I shared with him at age 19 that my first boyfriend would soon be proposing. But God has a way of working out relationships that He wills, regardless of popular opinion.
During our engagement, a married woman gave us a piece of advice that resurfaced in my memory this year. She said it would be important to keep our sense of humor, especially after having children. At the time I thought it was a weird thing to say and had no idea what she meant. After all, we were hopelessly in love, and there wasn't much funny about that!
Well...several years, three moves, two deployments, three pregnancies, and two trips to Bulgaria after brushing off that statement, there have been many moments we've laughed our way through because there was no other healthy option. That woman clearly knew what she was talking about!
Though Mason and I truly enjoyed a fairy tale-type story of meeting, marrying, adventuring, and quickly building our family, it hasn't been all sunshine and roses. I understand why people get divorced. I understand why it's difficult to stay married. We spent several years trying to keep our noses in "good" marriage books, hoping to unlock the keys to communication and love languages and whatever else those books promise. But it's only been this year that I think we've realized the most important key to marriage: our marriage isn't about us, it's about God. If I were to recommend a marriage book, it'd be one I haven't quite finished yet, Francis and Lisa Chan's You and Me Forever. The title is clever because the book is about how God designed marriage as a temporary (as in, not eternal) partnership by which a man and woman can achieve more for His Kingdom together than they could separately. It's really a dynamic idea because many people, myself included at one point, view marriage as a hindrance to ministry. After all, a married individual with several children can't traverse the globe meeting the needs of suffering masses in Jesus' Name as easily as a single person can. That's the way I viewed it. Chan puts it well:
Recently, we have met many singles who fear marriage. They watched friends who were passionate followers of Christ get married. The result was either an obsession with the pleasures of family or an unending string of arguments and counseling sessions. We are writing to say that it doesn't have to be this way. You can be more effective together than apart. In a truly healthy relationship, we enable each other to accomplish more than we could have done alone. This was His plan...
There are plenty of marriage books that will teach you how to get along and be happy. This is not one of those books. I am not knocking those. In fact, we have learned some helpful principles from them over the years. The problem with those books is that they can make you feel like having a happy family is the goal of Christianity. They can make primary things like God's glory and His mission sound secondary. They can nudge you into exchanging ultimate happiness for immediate happiness. To put it bluntly, those books don't account for the fact that you can have a happy earthly marriage and then be miserable for all eternity.
How wrong I was about marriage hindering ministry. God actually created good works in advance for Mason and me to do together. One of them is named Kamelia. Her adoption feels like an activation of our family. God first used Mason and me to build this strong, loving group of two parents and three children, committed to Him and to each other and to loving one another as He has loved us. His Spirit living in us then compelled us to throw open our doors and hearts to a girl from one of the darkest, hardest regions of the world for children. He set us up to use us. Marriage did not hinder our ministry, it's a tool He is using to display His love and power to those around us. And this isn't at all something special to our marriage, it's common to every marriage in which the husband and wife are living for eternity rather than their short, fleeting years on earth.
The past 5 months have been trying for us, but one significant truth I've learned is that it's always a great time for a do-over. This has applied many times with Kami, but also and really more importantly with Mason. Earlier in our marriage, when tensions were high and careless words are exchanged, it could affect us for days. Now I have realized the power of the do-over. If the lunch hour is a disaster because Mason comes home talking about important work issues while Isaiah is running around distributing chip crumbs across the floor, Ezekiel has a fever, Eden is asking repeatedly if I can play with her and Kami is asking for what seems like her tenth meal of the day, I could hypothetically snap. I did actually snap. But the whole day wasn't lost. After he left to go back to work, I had the choice to regroup, ask God for the grace I needed to make a fresh start, and greet Mason freshly (as freshly as possible after the four hours of chaos that ensued) when he rolled in for the evening. Now that we have been married these seven years and tripled the size of our family, I understand that our life here is too short and our days too precious to the Kingdom of God to waste them sulking and holding grudges. There is too much work to be done together for us to waste time on divisions.
Reaching our seven year wedding anniversary in May was exciting to me. Seven is a very meaningful number in the Bible. In God's Word it signifies wholeness, completion, even perfection. We are grateful to serve a God who has the power to renew us in our relationships with Him as well as our relationships with one another. We have seen Him do so many new things in us this year already that we are eagerly anticipating what is to come. We have in a sense completed some very significant, foundational, and challenging stages of marriage in our first seven years (this had something to do with delivering 3 babies in less than 4 years). As I reflect tonight on the moment I first met Mason ten years ago, I know that the LORD will continue to do mighty things in us the next ten years and beyond!
Though Mason and I truly enjoyed a fairy tale-type story of meeting, marrying, adventuring, and quickly building our family, it hasn't been all sunshine and roses. I understand why people get divorced. I understand why it's difficult to stay married. We spent several years trying to keep our noses in "good" marriage books, hoping to unlock the keys to communication and love languages and whatever else those books promise. But it's only been this year that I think we've realized the most important key to marriage: our marriage isn't about us, it's about God. If I were to recommend a marriage book, it'd be one I haven't quite finished yet, Francis and Lisa Chan's You and Me Forever. The title is clever because the book is about how God designed marriage as a temporary (as in, not eternal) partnership by which a man and woman can achieve more for His Kingdom together than they could separately. It's really a dynamic idea because many people, myself included at one point, view marriage as a hindrance to ministry. After all, a married individual with several children can't traverse the globe meeting the needs of suffering masses in Jesus' Name as easily as a single person can. That's the way I viewed it. Chan puts it well:
Recently, we have met many singles who fear marriage. They watched friends who were passionate followers of Christ get married. The result was either an obsession with the pleasures of family or an unending string of arguments and counseling sessions. We are writing to say that it doesn't have to be this way. You can be more effective together than apart. In a truly healthy relationship, we enable each other to accomplish more than we could have done alone. This was His plan...
There are plenty of marriage books that will teach you how to get along and be happy. This is not one of those books. I am not knocking those. In fact, we have learned some helpful principles from them over the years. The problem with those books is that they can make you feel like having a happy family is the goal of Christianity. They can make primary things like God's glory and His mission sound secondary. They can nudge you into exchanging ultimate happiness for immediate happiness. To put it bluntly, those books don't account for the fact that you can have a happy earthly marriage and then be miserable for all eternity.
How wrong I was about marriage hindering ministry. God actually created good works in advance for Mason and me to do together. One of them is named Kamelia. Her adoption feels like an activation of our family. God first used Mason and me to build this strong, loving group of two parents and three children, committed to Him and to each other and to loving one another as He has loved us. His Spirit living in us then compelled us to throw open our doors and hearts to a girl from one of the darkest, hardest regions of the world for children. He set us up to use us. Marriage did not hinder our ministry, it's a tool He is using to display His love and power to those around us. And this isn't at all something special to our marriage, it's common to every marriage in which the husband and wife are living for eternity rather than their short, fleeting years on earth.
The past 5 months have been trying for us, but one significant truth I've learned is that it's always a great time for a do-over. This has applied many times with Kami, but also and really more importantly with Mason. Earlier in our marriage, when tensions were high and careless words are exchanged, it could affect us for days. Now I have realized the power of the do-over. If the lunch hour is a disaster because Mason comes home talking about important work issues while Isaiah is running around distributing chip crumbs across the floor, Ezekiel has a fever, Eden is asking repeatedly if I can play with her and Kami is asking for what seems like her tenth meal of the day, I could hypothetically snap. I did actually snap. But the whole day wasn't lost. After he left to go back to work, I had the choice to regroup, ask God for the grace I needed to make a fresh start, and greet Mason freshly (as freshly as possible after the four hours of chaos that ensued) when he rolled in for the evening. Now that we have been married these seven years and tripled the size of our family, I understand that our life here is too short and our days too precious to the Kingdom of God to waste them sulking and holding grudges. There is too much work to be done together for us to waste time on divisions.
Reaching our seven year wedding anniversary in May was exciting to me. Seven is a very meaningful number in the Bible. In God's Word it signifies wholeness, completion, even perfection. We are grateful to serve a God who has the power to renew us in our relationships with Him as well as our relationships with one another. We have seen Him do so many new things in us this year already that we are eagerly anticipating what is to come. We have in a sense completed some very significant, foundational, and challenging stages of marriage in our first seven years (this had something to do with delivering 3 babies in less than 4 years). As I reflect tonight on the moment I first met Mason ten years ago, I know that the LORD will continue to do mighty things in us the next ten years and beyond!
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| I took the far right picture just a few weeks before we picked up Kami. Now there is one more hanging out the trunk. |
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