Good Like a Medicine

I guess we’re out of the newlywed chapter by now. This past May we celebrated 5 years of marriage. To us it seems sometimes that we’ve been married longer mostly because we have brought three children into our family in these five short years, but we have only begun our journey. I want to cry because I don’t think I can concisely write all the thoughts going around in my head at the moment, but like all good things from God’s hands, I don’t think I can keep it to myself either.

I must be the most blessed woman in the world.

Of course I can’t be the most blessed. This is seemingly arrogant, perhaps? But really I do feel that way today. And I think it’s okay. Perhaps a better way to say it is, “I am joining the circle of people who feel 100% satisfied.”

There are hundreds of tiny (or big, depending on the vantage point) problems in my heart and my marriage. There are things I wish I could change, and things I wish would just fix themselves. There are dreams I wish I could see happen right away, but God knows the joy I need comes from clinging to Jesus, surrenduring all of my dreams to His timing and plan, and watching Him work. There are things that face us in our life together and make us want to run and hide. There are fears of the unknown, and we have learned that trying to ignore them doesn’t work. There are sins (if we are honest, we will call them what they are) that won’t go away, and we can’t fight them in the darkness of denial or on our butts.

The nature of this chapter of motherhood with small children is by definition young. It’s growing, changing, painful at times. When you take that, mix it with the still relatively new marriage and throw in my natural bent towards perfectionism, there’s a good chance that some sparks are going to fly (uhem - pun). Sometimes I forget the days that are full of smiles and happiness because the stress and fear from the harder days clouds them in my mind. But God (don’t you love that phrase?) is so good. He gives me hope, and the mercies are new every single morning. All because of Jesus. I think out of the force of our most recent difficulties God has brought me to the point of complete contentment, and though the trials are still there, the gift of contentment is rising above them.

Last night we left our sleeping kids with a sitter and drove to meet our friends Ryan and Heather to visit and talk about Dave Harvey’s new book When Sinners Say I Do. What we have read already has been excellent, and I want to take the next several weeks to highlight some of the wonderful bits that I am taking to heart and mind from it. In a few days I will quote a few excerpts from the first few chapters and a summary of what God is teaching me through them, but for now I’ll just leave you with what a few other readers have said in their reviews of the book. Here are some “top ten” reasons I feel to be the most blessed by my husband.

1. He hardly ever complains.
2. He is playful.
3. He cheerfully gets the kids out of bed most mornings, feeds Meredith her evening bottle, and is a dinnertime multi-tasker.
4. He always jumps out of the driver’s seat and gets the kids strapped / unstrapped from their car seats when we ride together.
5. He sometimes calls me on my way to church and meets us in the parking lot to help us inside although he is busy getting ready to lead worship. In some ways getting into worship at our church can be like heading into the airport. Even on the days he can’t come outside he always calls me to see how my morning is going.
6. He is consistent and firm and sensitive to the issues I have had with disciplining the kids on hard days.
7. He doesn’t “zone out” playing games or watching tv (although we both are quite talented at zoning out on the computer)!
8. He esteems me in front of our children, and if dinner is bad, you won’t know it by him.
9. He is honest about when he needs a break from being Superdaddy, and he is good about reading my meter limit, too.
10. He leads us in Bible reading and prayer!

I guess this post was a long time coming, brought on partly by reading this book and partly by a comment a sweet lady made to me in a waiting room the other day. “You sure are lucky; You must be so happy that he is so good with the children!” I smiled then, and I smile now. No, we don’t have a perfect marriage, but in our weakness, God shouts hope and dances over us. For the last five years most of what I have known of my husband is his leading and loving me like Christ loves the church, and that is very humbling. I am blessed.

(If you so desire, click on this PDF link to open the table of contents for this book.)