waiting....

I have a new friend I have been praying for the softening of her heart towards the Lord.  I was praying the words for her that she cannot yet pray herself.  As I was praying a picture flashed in my mind of children in an orphanage in Ethiopia.  This meant a lot to me considering  I have another friend in Florida who has been in process of adopting their baby (one week younger than our twins) from there.  They went and met him, Baby T is all they are allowed to share for now, and now they sit waiting for that phone call saying they can come back and get their child.  They heard about him at 7 months and now for the past 14 months they have been in agonizing wait for their child to come home with them. As I reflected on what my prayer for an unbeliever would have to do with my friend adopting from Ethiopia it became clear to me.  God longs for us to come to Him the same way.  He patiently waits and desires nothing less than to wrap us in His loving arms and say welcome home, child.  I missed you!

The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness.  He is patient with you not wanting anyone to perish, but wanting everyone to come to repentance.  2 Peter 3:9

My Marriage: Defined.

Marriage, it is a word that is getting a lot of attention lately.  I am not going to use this as an opportunity to tell you what my opinion is on it politically.  Instead, I am going to tell you about mine. 

I met my husband in FL where he was stationed in the Air Force.  We had a quick and whirlwind dating period of only 2 months (when he realized he couldn't live without me :).  He asked me to marry him, I said yes, less than a year from when we met we were husband and wife.  And we lived happily ever after right?  Not exactly. 

After the honeymoon was over we weathered 2 hurricanes in just our first year, the second one destroyed our home and all of our possessions.  He was restationed to England.  It was hard being only married for one year and then overseas alone without family.  We had a lot of growing to do.  We technically were two people become one, but it took a while before we started behaving that way.  We started our family quickly and brought home a 2 yr old and newborn baby girl after our 3 yr tour in the UK.   Children are a wonderful kind of glue to a marriage helping us learn to work together and work things out when trouble comes.

We returned to FL for 2 yrs. and in that time I lost my daddy to cancer.  More glue, but this time it was my husband who patiently held my hand through the grieving process.  Mike got out of the Air Force and started flying for American in Dallas/Ft. Worth Texas.  

After 9-11 we decided to move to his family in the Chicago area.  Extended family is also like glue.  We have survived layoffs, unemployment, law school, high risk pregnancies, miscarriages and adopting twins giving us a total of seven darling children in our home.  Every trial has brought us closer....kind of like SUPERGLUE.

Last week we had a severe thunderstorm.  The winds were howling and my precious gazebo was picked up and thrown into the deck railing causing the entire metal frame to collapse to the ground.  Mike knew I loved that silly gazebo.  My heart sank when I looked out the window and saw the damage.  I didn't say a word, because I love people more than things and knew it didn't matter in the big picture, but I was very sad.  He called me from work a few hours later and told me he had an idea to fix it.  It made me smile that he was sitting at his desk thinking of me and what would make me happy. 

When I pulled into the driveway later that night from running the kids around he was already home and was drilling and screwing supports on the gazebo's metal frame.  I turned the car off and looked at my beautiful teen aged daughters and said, "Good luck girls finding someone as awesome as your daddy!"  They agreed with a "Oh GREAT!!! He just raised the bar again!"  (Probably all part of his master plan ;)

We had another storm a few days later and guess what?  The gazebo didn't move!  I sit in it and look at the supports he lovingly added to it and started reflecting on marriage.  It is a lot like that.  You weather storms, assess the damage, add support....get the picture?  Love is great and motivates you to do selfless things for one another, but marriage isn't happily ever after with out some good old fashioned elbow grease. 

We will be celebrating 18 yrs. this October.  It feels like only yesterday.  I really really REALLY do love him more today than yesterday.  I have learned that our success has been in working together as a team and to patiently wait on one another when we don't see eye to eye.  We choose to keep our promises to one another and be faithful no matter what.  We always tell the truth and choose to forgive when one of us makes a mistake.  It isn't easy, but it is worth it! 

We model our marriage as Christ and His bride , we didn't always do it that way, but I know we have profoundly changed and grown as a couple since we have.  When we didn't follow God's model so closely we weren't operating at the level we do today.  One of the most important things I did was started praying for my husband.  It was so profound and marriage changing.  One time I was teaching on the book "The Power of a Praying Wife" by Stormie Omartian and a woman stopped me and told me she didn't have time to pray for her husband.  She candidly shared that he was an adult and she expected him to pray for himself.  I didn't quite know what to say.  I wish she had understood that praying for him is like praying for herself, after all two become one, when you pray for him you are praying for you by default!  I pray for my husband all the time.  I also pray for more time, whatever time we have appointed in this life, for God to add to it!  I pray that constantly.

God has blessed our marriage.  Over and over He blesses it.  Of every good gift God has given me on this earth, I think our marriage is my all time favorite gift.  (Even baby twins wouldn't have been as much fun without my incredible husband.) 

I love you, Baby!

Ephesians 5:22-33, Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord.   For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior.  Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word,  and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.   In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.
After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church—for we are members of his body.  “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”  This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.