So, I was totally going to wait until tomorrow to post this, but since my wife has already been posting some songs for our anniversary ---- here it goes: Happy Anniversary a day early to my wife of 15 years, Peggy R.Rees. It has been an incredible journey and I wouldnt have traded anything for this! I Love You, Babe! Looking forward to another 30 years and rocking chairs! Oh yeah, I almost forgot, my blog post for the week follows: Something to Celebrate On a January day, 15 years ago, my wife and I were married. This in and of itself is not so much a big deal, as people get married all the time and there are many marriages that have lasted longer. What is significant is that we recognized how broken and hurt we had been before. Some of which was our fault and some of which was from the decisions of our previous life partners. The fact that we took the time to acknowledge this brokenness before God and each other was important, for one cannot know how much better things can be until admitting how bad they have been. You can then go about the process of healing, identifying your strengths and weaknesses and seeking restoration from Christ. Without the salve of His Love and Grace, we would not have been able to step out in Faith and Believe that He had brought us to each other as a gift. Not so much a gift or reward for always having done things right, but for having made the wrong choice previously and now seeking His guidance for a new relationship that would more closely resemble His intended design. We make many decisions in Life without seeking His will for our lives. But the closer we are to desiring His will and not our own, the more closely these choices will reflect His Desire for us. We have a Father who delights in us and wants to give us good things. But these are always tempered with our own choices to be obedient and seek Him, or to continue beating our heads against a wall and never learning the lessons that would save us from so much grief and heartache. Many of our hearts desires have been good things, but we may have gone about them the wrong way. Namely, not seeking His thoughts on the matter ahead of time and marriage is one area where this is so apparently true. With a divorce rate of over fifty percent, even in our churches, it is no wonder that we are a broken and messed up people. Divorce clearly leads to broken men and women and their children. We live in a fallen world with so much going wrong and divorce is only one area that contributes to it. But it is a significant piece to the overall brokenness of the world. While everything was coming up roses for us in our newly found friendship and love, my fiance and I were spending a lot of time in reflection. A lot of soul searching was being done so that we would know what we were bringing into this relationship and also what was lurking out there that would want to wiggle its way in. Two people from different worlds and differing backgrounds does not make for a peaceful and easy marriage the first time around, much less attempting it a second time after the rubble and debris of a shattered first one. The Trust and Love that must be there, the willingness to persevere should anything this time around remind us of the previous one. The arguments that might seem strangely and eerily familiar. The thoughts of throwing in the towel and that this isnt working. The selfishness that we inadvertently bring in with us. All of these must be laid aside in favor of the willful desire to be obedient to our Good Father who gave us this gift of a new love at the right time. His plan for us to bring healing to each other as we have been given it from Him. His example to look at as a means of reminding us that the marriage is not solely about me or her. The mirror that we must carry around with us to look in and see if the problem is looking right back at me. The give and take and the opportunity to esteem the one that God has gifted you with as better than yourself. A heart whose only desire is to seek the best for your spouse, even at your own selfish expense. The approach to our marriage has always been to seek the highest good for each other. Although this is not true for us at every moment. We have moments of frustration and disagreement. We do not always see eye to eye. Rather than pretend that all is well, I would prefer to be honest. We are human and broken and have moments of disappointment and apathy. But we always come back to the fact that He has brought us together and that this is so much better than our first attempt at marriage. Even in the hurt and voices of pain from our past, we resolve to love each other and to forgive. This can only be because we Believe in a Loving and Forgiving Father in Heaven. Without this Foundation, we would have thrown in the towel long ago, grown-up babies who couldnt get their own way. Ups and downs, Highs and Lows, Things we have lost and things we have gained. For better or worse, For richer for poorer, through sickness and in health there has always been a “want to” for us. Not for fear of another failure, but because our Father would want us to and we know what we vowed before Him. He has not let us down, even though we have let each other down. He has shown us the Way of Love and we have not forgotten it. He has shown us that Love is a Verb, an action, an active, living and breathing part of us. Not based solely on a feeling, because feelings waver and they also come and go. The apostle Paul captured the description of Love this way: Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. 1 Corinthians 13: 4-7 NLT So today as we look back on our years together, we can give thanks to God for all that He has brought us through, all that He has brought us from and all that He has allowed us to become. I can honestly thank my wife for helping me to be the man that God would have me to be, even though there are still flaws. I can truly thank her for loving me through some rough patches and praying for me to be all that she needs me to be. I can thank God for the gift of my wife and how much of a helper she has been to me. Sometimes with tough Love and sometimes with quiet Grace, she has looked to the future with Faith and Belief in all that I could become. With Love, Patience and Hope she has loved me and stood by me through a lot of things a selfish woman would not have and that is something to be celebrated!
Posted on: Wed, 07 Jan 2015 02:04:39 +0000