8 years

Eight years ago I got married. I was scared out of my mind. I've been plenty scared since then too. Marriage is a scary thing - to be responsible for someone else, to be fully committed to being restored to someone even if that means having to deal with the deep rooted problems in your own soul and being patient and devoted to someone having deep rooted problems themselves. It is a battle.

But it is pretty cool too. I look at myself now and compare it to myself eight years ago and I see that I am much different. I am older, in a good way. The fruit of the spirit is slowly sprouting out of the weak plant and barren soil of my heart. And what is life if you aren't battling? What is life if you aren't building something? What is life if you don't embrace what God gives you and step one foot in front of the other toward what he calls you to achieve? A life without that is a zombie life, an easy life, but a zombie one. It is un-human.

Ten years ago, a wonderful and complicated person came into my life and we became a tangled mess tumbling toward who knows what. She pushed me to my limits, I pushed her to hers, we were forced to trust that at least God knew what he was doing and would make us into adults somehow... someday. I am glad to say that we are becoming adults. We might still make it there yet.

Abby doesn't like it when I talk about our marriage this way. She thinks it makes it sound like it is a chore or a burden, like we must be doing something wrong if we aren't experiencing Jane Austen bliss. But this is the only way I would have it, the only way I could have it. Without the battle I would most assuredly be a zombie. I had been one my whole life. Riding the wave, never committing, never risking, never acting. God gave me the wife I needed, one that would knock the rust away and force me to be a human. My hope is that I keep growing into the man that can return the favor and be the husband she needs. Maybe someday I will be as refined, put together, and quick to reform as Mr. Darcy and can provide a Pemberly life where our united mission is well ordered, efficient, expansive, and admired by all. But we have to start somewhere. And I am grateful to God that he gave me a start. He gave me a somewhere. I look at myself and see how un-human I still am and it freaks me out a little bit to think of the frightening state of un-humanness I once was. The courtship and early years of marriage were not romantic in the Disney sense to say the least. It was a rescue, which is romantic in a different way.

After 8 years, we are as an eight-year-old in art class. We bring our construction paper collage marriage home and show it to God with the pride of an eight-year-old in his eight-year-old talent. And God smiles upon us saying, "well done" and he puts it on the refrigerator. It doesn't get much better than that.

Happy Anniversary, Abby. I love you.