It is the strength that comes when God brings two people together.
It's the strength that comes when we face difficult challenges together: praying, stressing, feeling sad, and holding each other up.
It's the strength that comes when we go to church together, singing together, hearing the gospel, and talking about how blessed we are on the way home.
It's the strength that comes when we make our favorite pasta dish together ("Henry and Annette's Spicy Pesto Chicken" we call it--maybe I'll provide the recipe sometime).
It's the strength that comes when he has to bite his tongue when I'm obsessing over something crazy like my hair and I bite mine when he's obsessing over . . . We're so strong I'm not going to tell what he obsesses over. It wouldn't be fair.
It's the strength that comes when we both get the week-long most horrible flu--together--and at the first sign of recovery, Henry goes out and picks up carry-out Indian food because we don't want to cook but we want to eat.
It's the strength that comes when we spend an incredibly romantic week in a log cabin (there's that wood) in the Smoky Mountains celebrating our fifth wedding anniversary.
It's the strength that comes when we pick through the soaked junk from the flooded basement that ended up in the garage. I find my childhood dolls ruined, and Henry throws them away for me because I can't.
It's the strength that comes when we have good times with the kids . . . and sometimes not so good. Like when they graduate from high school and college, and when one calls, crying, to say she's been in a car accident, and she's okay, but the car is totaled.
It's the strength that comes as we seek to have, with the Holy Spirit's help, the humility that Jesus demonstrated, described here in Philippians 2, the passage we chose for our wedding message:
So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.It's the strength that comes from having the same love and being in full accord and of one mind, which brings us back to the God who brought us together.
At five years, our marriage is beautifully strong. May our love continue to grow stronger and stronger. I love you, Henry!
No comments:
Post a Comment