If Only...

 Three months. Three months isn’t a great deal of time…but for me, the last 3 months have marked some of the longest of my 22 years. Three months ago, I stood on stage with a pounding heart and gave myself to a Godly man. I committed to walk life alongside him, to honor him, serve him, and love him.  When I spoke those words before a sanctuary of witnesses, I knew they were weighty words. I knew they were important and life changing. I knew I was making a promise for the good, the bad, and the ugly. What I didn’t know was that I was making the decision to be weak, broken, and challenged as I had never been before.  I didn’t know how often and how drastically I would fail to uphold these vows. I didn’t know that I was opening myself to a time of deep pain and complete exposure. I would’ve said that I knew… but I certainly didn’t understand. In the last three months, my dirtiest, most hidden filth has broken through the surface of my heart and spilled into the view of not only myself, but of my husband. I have done and said the most hurtful things perhaps of my entire life. I have deeply wounded my husband and my Heavenly Father and chosen to reject the forgiveness of both time and time again. After all the planning, lace, and sparkles floated away, I found myself…disappointed. Disappointed in myself for desiring to be a wife for so long and then being horrible at it...disappointed in God for “making” me believe in the beauty of something and then leaving me hanging. It has been HARD. I share these things not because I am itching to air my dirty laundry, because I want to bash marriage, or because I am proud of where my heart has been the last three months. I share these things because they are not the end of the story. I share them because my heart is aching to be honest, to speak to hearts and break through the world’s shallow perceptions of not only marriage, but life and our lack of contentment with it. If there is one word I believe God wants to teach me right now, it is contentment. For 22 years, I have been overwhelmed by the desire for the next step: As a child, I wanted to be a teenager. As a teenager, I couldn’t wait to be a college girl. As a college girl, I believed I was far past ready to be married. As a new bride, I still ache for more: when will we have a more wide-spread ministry? When we will have a better marriage? When will we be parents? When can we adopt? On…and on…and on. Time and time again, I allow my thoughts and my fears to rage, controlling my “trust” in God and my willingness to rest in His providence. All this time, my Father has been whispering to my heart, “Rest in me. Trust my goodness. Rest.” My stubborn, controlling, sinful heart has said that I trust Him, and yet I take things into my own hands again and again. Marriage hasn’t been all of what I expected it to be….but God is using it to make me beautiful and to make Himself known to me. I often miss the days when I was independent…when I didn’t have to need another person. I could come as go as I wanted, have time with God without the possibility of someone walking into the living room at anytime, and pour myself out in ministry endlessly. Marriage is hard and messy and refining….and beautiful. I am excited to watch God be glorified as our marriage continues to grow. I am deeply loved by an incredible man of God. I have a partner, a constant listener and encourager. I have the opportunity to love and encourage my husband and to grow beneath him and alongside him. Most of all, I have the opportunity to seek and know my God in ways I have not before.  If you are at the time in your life where you are single, enjoy it. Love it. Soak it up! How blessed you are to have these sweet years of intimacy with God! Not that marriage takes away intimacy with God, but it is a time of adjustment and learning how to seek God separately and alongside your spouse. If you are married without children….love it! Soak it up! Go for spontaneous ice cream dates at 11pm, travel, minister! If you are married with children, if you are 50 and single, if you are 89….LOVE it. Soak it up! It is true that no matter the life stage we are in, there will be something to miss when the next stage comes and some things that are less than ideal. Too often, we are so set on looking and dreaming ahead that we miss what God is doing now and what He has already done My God is wise. He is love and His plans for His children are good. No matter where I am (or am not) in life, it is my new mission to thank Him always…thank Him for the hard and the opportunities to grow. Thank Him for the good, the exciting, the fulfilled dreams, the new dreams… and the dreams that are to die off. He IS good. He IS worthy. It is only in knowing Him that we know anything good…and through Him, wherever He leads is brimming with blessing.

"...I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.  I can do all this through him who gives me strength." 

-Philippians 4:11-13-