God is moving across Kenya

I cannot explain to you the feeling that swept over me as I looked around the church in the Sinai slum as 80 men and women sang and danced and raised their hands in gratitude for all God has done in their lives over the 9 months they were in the Care for Aids program.  Kids were running in and out of the aisles, playing outside, and sleeping on chairs next to their parents. My mind went in so many directions. To my daughter who lived in an orphanage and now with her second family, not her first. To these kids who their path would have been the painfully similar, the hurt and pain of losing their parents. To these parents who's lives are changed and empowered to keep living. To communities who are changing the stigma that still exists with the disease. To lives eternally impacted by the completion of a wholistic healing program. I talked with the spiritual counselor of our center before graduation and he told me snippets of stories of clients impacted, 9 people who put their trust in Christ, women and men now earning income and sending their children to school and educating infected children and others in their community on how to manage life with AIDS.

Then I returned home. I got back to carpool, taking kids to sports, paying bills, cleaning the house. But my thoughts lingered to that graduation. Thinking about the next 80 families that just started the program in our center. That is another group of potentially 300+ children whose parents are fighting for life and to be the ones to raise them. When I look at our budget, I cannot help but be led to sacrifice more. God is asking more, asking bigger, and leading tenderly. The impact of a dollar there versus a dollar here is jaw dropping.

When John and I graduated college we worked with an amazing organization called Cafe 1040. It trains college students inside countries hostile to the gospel on how to live long term there and have kingdom impact. It was on a trip to North Africa my eyes were opened to Islam and how God's heart beats for Muslims. God planted something deep in my heart on that trip for Muslim communities. I wanted them to desperately know the good news, that they no longer have to weigh their good deeds against their bad deeds in hopes of making it into heaven. I wanted them to know there is a Savior who paid their price and all they have to do is trust and believe. However their costs are much more costly than mine to accept Jesus' gift. They often lose their family, community, and even some their lives. 

As I heard about Care for Aids moving into Mombasa, I felt God intersect several passions for me. Orphan prevention, Muslims, the outcast, marriages. I started to pray if we could do a second center. My flesh told me it was too big of a financial commitment, that we were already giving and just to rest in that, that someone else would step up and get engaged in the mission. Yet as I looked around that graduation room and saw families raising their hands waving their certificates of completion in the air with hearts of gratitude for their very lives and legacy, I felt like there was no reason not to move. God was asking something big and he wanted my trust.

So we are stepping out in faith and opening a second center. Our Mombasa center will open in September and run until June when I will again return and again see all God has done. Our family is all in and excited what God can do with our simple yes as we follow him. We rallied our community, and so many of YOU, around launching Sinai and it is off the ground and running amazingly. Now we are excited to do it again! As I think about so many friends, friends of friends, Facebook friends, blog readers, and family who rallied the Sinai center over a year ago and made this happen, I think not of dollars raised but families impacted. Read this post if you heart is pulled to get involved for more details and backstory on how we got the Sinai center going. God doesn't need our money but he invites us to be a part of the ways he is moving across Kenya. Prayerfully consider joining us and going next year to see what you got to be a part of! Here is an awesome video about Mombasa.
You can give online at our Mombasa fundraising page at this LINK! Feel free to share this post and rally your community to be a part as well!
Because life is not about what we amassed in our homes, the to do list on our phones, the bills we pay, the stuff we have. It is about how we leveraged what we have for others, the legacy we are building and leaving on earth. Because as someone so clearly said, No one takes a U-haul to heaven! Join us in this amazing adventure. Live a good story. Be a part of something bigger.
Humbly,

Stories of Death to Life, Magdalene, Grace and Jen

There was a day in the trip where we did a few home visits of clients from other centers. We got to see a client in the first phase of the program, the middle phase, and a graduate who had finished the program over a year ago... please read their stories below. I pray you find in them, strength, encouragement, conviction, and hope. Please pray for these amazing women and the journey God has them on!

Magdalene

We walked in the small 8x10 corrugated metal home that was big enough to house a bed, couch, TV and small table. It was the first time in the trip I smelled the stench of death and sickness so intensely. I prayed God would give me the strength to engage fully. On the side of the bed sat Magdalene, a frail soft woman under 100 pounds who struggled to swallow and breathe.  At first she would not make eye contact and just sat slumped with her head down. We started to talk and ask questions and she began to share, with each passing story her gaze was more frequent in our eyes, her tone strengthened and even her words became stronger with each passing sentence. Magdalene had to be between 24-30 years old, it was hard to tell in her condition. She had been working in a factory, pregnant, and realized she was becoming more and more ill. 

One day she passed out at work and was taken to the hospital. At the hospital she was given a test and diagnosed as HIV+. She was so ashamed of her status and feared the shunning that would come from her community. She withdrew until she birthed her child and became bedridden thereafter. Her neighbor, Grace came to visit her and told her about the Care for Aids program. The 9 months was already underway, but Grace knew Magdalene wouldn't make it to see the start of another program. She got her enrolled. A neighbor was caring for Magdalene's new baby as she couldn't get herself out of bed. Once she started the program and started on her medicine with food supplements, she could walk again with help. The spiritual counselor, Matthew, who was with us, said he would walk with Magdalene as she leaned on him. He said she couldn't even carry a 1 kilogram bag of rice, when wind blew she would stumble down. Now over a month into the program, she was getting treatment for tuberculosis and getting stronger. We asked Magdalene how we could pray for her and she said first- strength in her body so she can care for her son again. Her next request floored me as she said it through difficulty talking, she asked us to pray for strength in her body and soul because she needs to minister to others with AIDS. She continued on how there are so many like her that just need to hear, they need a helping hand to make it to this program. She said, "I knew of God before I found Care for AIDS, but I did not meet Jesus so closely until now." Magdalene's story shook me. I have never seen a person so close to death from HIV. Magdalene truly would not have lived much longer. Also such a powerful display of community, without Grace who was already started in CFA, coming into her home and physically taking her, she would not be here. She would not be able to raise her baby. She would not know Jesus as the source of her healing and strength. I know God will answer Magdalene's selfless prayers, she will be healed and be a blessing to others and her son will grow up with his mother by his side. Magdalene's story is one of life, healing, help and hope.

Grace's story
Grace came to the van to meet us, next to her was a sweet and shining face she introduced as Josephine. They walked us to Grace's front door and Josephine went back to braiding her client's hair who was sitting outside the home. 

Grace had a strong smile, a tight hug, and a joy in her face.  But as she told us her story, Grace had had an impossible year. Her only son had recently died after being struck by a car. Her sickness was getting worse, so she spent a year, isolating herself, fearing it would be HIV and she did not want to be outcasted so she kept quiet and didn't get tested. She didn't even tell her best friend Josephine, who lived next door. Finally, she got so weak she feared she was dying. She asked Josephine to take her to the hospital. She knew she needed to get tested but feared she would lose her best friend Josephine's acceptance. Josephine said "well then I will get tested with you." Grace's fears were true, she was positive. After she heard Josephine tested negative she knew their friendship would be over, but she told this part of the story with such joy "You know, Josephine embraced me even more now knowing my status!" She heard about the Care for Aids program through their local church and got started right away. As she was talking to us, she grabbed her pill bottle of ARV medication and shook it and said to us "I am not afraid anymore, these are mine. My name is on this bottle. I don't care who knows." What a powerful display of overcoming her own self-stigma. When we met Grace she was only in month 4 of the 9 month program, but she had already learned to accept and love herself despite her status. A few months earlier she had been isolated for a year, too afraid to even get tested because of fear, now here she is full of joy shaking her pill bottle proudly. This is also the Grace who introduced Magdalene to the program. She is radically changing the face of AIDS in her community. She chatted on about learning to make a cake in the program in one of the skills training. She told us how they would heat firewood to heat sand in a bowl and put all the ingredients in a different bowl and cook it on the heated sand. She couldn't wait to sell her cakes. Grace is a story of the power of community, breaking the chains of self stigma, and physically and spiritually loving your neighbors as yourself. As I looked at Grace, I realized I was the one in poverty. I lacked this beautiful picture of community that she has. In America, we don't need to depend on others for our very lives sometimes, we also rarely reach out to our neighbors, draw them in, tell them they are loved, and walk with them side by side through trials and joys. Grace moved me. 

The story of Jen
I was curious of what meeting Jen would be like. She had graduated the Care for Aids program almost a year and a half previous. Her house was a modest wooden shed type in the hills near Limuru. As we hiked up the terrain to get to her home we passed a wood slatted outhouse and six chickens and a young cow. Jen arrived a few minutes later, her smile beaming from the back of a motorcycle taxi. She quickly ran up the hill to us and greeted us each with a huge hug and high fives. She unlocked the padlock on her home and invited us in. Inside she awoke her two 1 year old twins and sent them out to us. Chickens roamed in the house as she settled herself and us around the couches in the main room of the home. She talked of being on her deathbed a few months before the program. She had found out her HIV diagnosis and her husband left her with 3 children because of it. Now her source of income was gone. Time passed as her condition worsened and times grew desperate and then she heard from her husband again. He explained how he wanted to get back together and rebuild, however she was used for his advantage for a night and she became pregnant with twins.Through the 9 month program she learned skills of how to take her medicine, how to raise chickens, how to be a part of a community again, how to find strength in the most hopeless of situations and how to find strength in Jesus. In her words, Jen explained that through all she learned through CFA "God has taken me from Dust to a palace" as she talked of being bedridden before and now raising chickens, selling potatoes and providing for her family as a single mom of 5 children aged 1-15. We asked her connection with CFA currently and she said "I am now courageous to tell people my status because If they don't know from me how will they know how to heal?" 
She goes back frequently to empowerment sessions in the program and teaches other clients how to raise chickens for eggs and income. She also invites others to embrace their status instead of fearing stigma. She shows them her strength and the success and life hat still remains after an AIDS diagnosis. As we sat around the small living quarters, she beamed as any mother would as she told us about how one of her sons has been ranked 1st in his class for 6 years. Potentially beating the odds of coming from a single AIDS infected mother in poverty. You could see the hope she had in her son. A cycle of poverty that would stop in her children. Her smile and positivity was so inspiring. Her spouting of scripture and the source of where she draws her strength was encouraging. She sent us away, having filled our cups with her joy and strength. It was a privilege to have met Jen, to see how she has risen above a statistic. She has become a beacon of hope in her community. It is such a privilege for our family to see people like Jen, that Jesus brought from literal death to life through the program of Care for AIDS.

Kenya downloading

It is hard to take a 12 day trip and boil it down into a one concise page description. So many people ask, 'how was your trip?' as if i could shorten it down into a 30 second sound byte of our experience. And as I process "how was my trip" I realize it is more about the people I met and the stories they shared rather than my "experience" in

Kenya...these precious Kenyan people that asked me to return to America and share their story. So I will. As weeks go on I want to share with you the stories of death to life, strength in turmoil, and beauty from ashes. The temptation is to overlook someone's story because it is such a foreign comparison to our own, but then we all miss out on the experience of Kenya and the way God is moving there. And in my own way, I did find my own story wrapped somehow inside of theirs, a single mom of 5 in the slums, a woman who is an overcomer of her HIV status, a man who went against his family history in Islam and found Jesus as a boy on the streets. Somewhere tucked deep inside I saw myself in each person, or someone I want to be. Africa has a way of resetting my heart on what is important. I have truly experienced the joy of the verse in Matthew 6:21, For where you treasure is, there your heart will be also. It is hard to explain how my heart came alive as I looked around a room of 90 graduates, raising their Bibles and journals in the air and waving them with accomplishment, pride, and triumph. I run the risk of you thinking it is because of our family or community, which it is not. God would have brought this center to life with or without our involvement, but I wouldn't have gotten to see it play out. God didn't need me to do this, I got to be a part. For those of you who faithfully gave to our center in Sinai, thank you, and please read on in the coming weeks and hear about the lives transformed and community impacted. As I looked around that room on graduation day and I saw so many children running in and out of their parents legs, sleeping on chairs next to their mothers, or babies wrapped around their mama's backs, I thought of what their future would have been if their parents would have continued down the dark path of death that AIDS usually brings in their community.

These kids now have moms and parents strengthened in the word of God, strengthened in their health, and empowered with a skill that will bring income to their family.  We sat in the homes of these graduates and heard about their excitement to be selling soap, peanut butter, beaded items, eggs, charcoal, etc. All skills they never had before, now they are sending their kids to school with their income. My words do not do this transformation justice.
When we go to Kenya, it is not a "short term mission trip". We have no project, no building to build, no well to dig. We go to be present, to show someone they have value, to hold a hand, to be a friend.

"Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody. 
I think that is a much greater hunger, 
a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat."   Mother Theresa

Our schedule while we were there revolved around being. Being with people in their homes, people who previously have been shunned from their families and communities. Homes that have been marked with an invisible red X to their neighbors not to enter because of fear of AIDS. We go and hold hands and pray for people, people that their spouses no longer want to touch because it has become a blame game of who gave it to who. These were the favorite moments of my trip, which I will expand in more detail in days to come. Jesus meets you face to face when you enter in to someones pain, when you hold the hand of a diseased woman He has brought to life. These are the most beautiful moments.

 

Back to Kenya...

In less than 2 months we will be setting foot on the red dirt of Kenya. I cannot explain how that lights me up inside.  Our kids have cried and begged to go back and now our sweet Maran will have her turn to come along.  This trip is especially meaningful to me to take her along with us, back to her birth continent. She will go back to a very similar culture from which she came, she will walk through the slums of Nairobi and visit houses very similar to the one she describes growing up in.  The pain and the beauty that comes along with returning to Africa for her is amazing.  She has begged to go visit. She asks frequently after dinner if we can put our leftovers in a backpack and send it to the people in Africa because she acutely remembers being hungry. I am already praying for her heart for this trip. She will get to serve the very culture she came out of. She will get to play a part in orphan prevention. A previous orphan serving those who would have become orphaned. The magnitude of that is not lost on me. I am praying God prepares her heart in a mighty way to be touched and healed through going back, through seeing the poverty and pain, through serving the least of these. I pray he uses this trip to unearth hidden places in her heart, there will be memories surfaced and pain brought back to mind, but what I told my husband is I would rather walk through more grieving together than leave those dark places covered. Full healing probably won't come until heaven but this just may be another step in the journey toward wholeness for her. I will not glorify it, I am sure she will be tired, confused, whiney, and maybe even selfish. But my prayer for her is that she radiates the joy and love God has given her and allows him to show her more of who He is through this trip.

In addition, our 7 and 8 year olds will be going with us too. They have prayed this center into being and are excited to see what God has done when we stepped out as a family and said yes to God. 90 families will be forever changed as they have received health education, empowerment on how to make an income and how to use it wisely, trained in a skill to earn a living and break the cycle of poverty. I am elated to go watch these 90 clients walk across and receive their certificate of completion of this 9 month journey of healing, and another 90 to begin shortly thereafter. We are taking some friends and family with us as well and I am so excited to watch them experience the work Care for Aids does so well in Kenya. Please join us in praying for our trip. If you want to join in on a part of the trip, please consider writing a letter of encouragement and congratulations to a  graduate. You can get more info of how to do that here.
I am so grateful to venture overseas again. This is a gift I don't take lightly. This is a sacrifice we will continue to make as a family. I pray our kids see the joy that comes from serving. I pray their eyes are opened to a Big God and a big world. People so often ask where is God when people are struck with AIDS, dying, war, orphaning millions of children. I wonder instead, why did I sit by in my air conditioned house and focus on my to do list instead of getting involved. I am so grateful to center our family on this mission. Loving Jesus means our lives might not make sense, the way we spend our money might not be logical in the world's eyes. Thank you Jesus for rescuing me from myself, from a boring and predictable life. Every day I have to push against this tension for a comfortable, easy life versus the stretching and exciting life he has for me. I am so thankful God is writing a story I could have never imagined in our family. It is not perfect and I screw it up most every day, but he fills in the gaps where I fall short. I am so grateful for the excitement he has put in our hearts.  I cannot wait to get back to a place that holds such a piece of my heart!

Get on your beam

I remember sitting on the couch a several years ago watching this video by Francis Chan (It's only 3 minutes, you really should watch!) In summary, he challenged us that life is like a balance beam. A lot of us just lay down and cling to our beam out of fear and desire for safety instead of standing up and doing our routine, even though its risky, and you might fall, but isn't that better than laying down and clinging to your beam and jumping off at the end of your life saying "How was that God?" Instead, living a life of risk for God and living a story that is contrary to what the world would say is comfortable and good.  This is a video that has challenged John and I and stretched us in ways. It has challenged us to take a dream or a crazy ideas of what our family could look like and attempt to make it a reality.

A few weeks ago we were on the way home from a gymnastics meet with our daughter. I asked her how she is able to focus in a meet. Meets are loud. People are cheering, floor routine music is playing for the other gymnasts on the floor,  people are talking, kids are shouting. Then, there's my girl on the beam, laser focused on every aspect of her routine, trying to execute it with precision. I asked her on the way home, 'how can you focus with all that going on? You're even hearing the same music you have learned all the moves to for floor and yet you're on the beam. You don't get the routines mixed up and you don't look over at whats going on when people shout and cheer. How do you do that?' She said something to me that really has made me think. She said "Mom, I just pretend like its quiet. I pretend like I am in a room with my coach and I repeat everything in my head that my coach says to me in practice. So all I hear is her voice telling me what to do for the next move". (She proceeded to go through the script she hears in her head, 'approach, mount, split, present, arabesque, handstand, tighten it up, keep it vertical reese, down, leap, turn, look forward', and so on).  I was shocked at her answer.
I realized she is learning a skill and a self control mechanism that I need more of. I wish I could do a better job at quieting the noise around me, the shouts that the world throws out of "get more, you're not enough, compare, someone else is doing it better" and just quiet it all and just listen for God's voice telling me who I am and what to do next. If I just pretended like it was only me and Him, no audience around waiting for me to fall or seeing if I do it flawlessly.
Such a beautiful picture of a life that I want to live, not a safe life, but a life surrendered, moving in the presence of Him, not focused or caring of the onlookers approval, just hearing His voice tell me the next step to take. What if our lives could be a beautiful routine? One that shocks and twists and turns, one of falls and getting back up, one of huge leaps and amazing feats. It requires some letting go, some risk, and a lot of listening to our Coach for the next move, challenging us on to the next step. That is what I want more of.

Ramblings on the messy side of Gratitude

So this month as a family we are focusing our conversations around gratitude. We have all memorized "In this house we will giggle"'s cute, catchy definitions and verses about it. But as I "teach" my kids about gratitude, the more I really dig in, I realize gratitude is getting messier as I grow deeper in my faith. We made a gratitude tree and each night we clip a clothespin on it with something we are thankful for. There is a lot in the surface of my life I am grateful for: our church, my husband's job, 4 amazing kids, a growing and caring marriage, family close by, etc. But the more I really think about the moments in my life where it was the most impactful and thus I am the most grateful, I realize those moments at the time were the deepest valleys, the heaviest weights, the sharpest of pains. God is taking me to a place in my walk with him that I am most thankful for my moments of suffering. It wasn't something that could've been muttered in the moment, in the moment, on the contrary, I was shouting at him, clawing to get out of the pit, or empty and angry. But as he brings me out of different challenges, I see looking back that in my suffering I am so near to him. In my hardest times I am clinging to him with desperation and dependency. I am drinking in the Word like it is my only water source. Then when life gets "easy" again, I tend to go on autopilot or coast through my relationship with him without recognizing that level of dependence still should exist.

I thought on my drive home last night, what were some of the moments I felt most alive with God and thus so grateful for, I came up with a tough list... clinging to the leg of my best friend of 10 years as he took his last breath, walking the streets of a country hostile to Christians and feeling the physical weight press on my chest for God's love for them, praying over my new child with my husband as she was just a shell of a girl overcome by trauma and grief, the impossible weeks that followed in a violent country where I was being tested from every direction, the days where my marks of motherhood were spit in my face, claw marks on my chest, and a child that ran from me. Those are the glory days of my faith. Not when I felt like I had it all together and health, wealth and happiness all lined up in a pretty package for me.
So as we clip our moments of gratitude on our tree I see it is not just me that is thankful for the messier things in life: my son has clipped on God cleaning out the yuck in his heart, our daughter that we are made creatively unique, our other daughter wrote her birth mother and that God gives us joy when we are sad. Our tree from the outside is not a pretty picture of words like money, health, and happiness; although we are deeply grateful for such things. Yet, I find myself increasingly more appreciative for the times where he strips me of "self strength" and I land in a place where nothing makes sense but him. I can taste him more in that place, I need to breathe him in there, and he shows up, maybe not in the way I was asking him to or how the world would think looks like an answer to prayer, but he is there. So this all leads to a shift in the outlook on my life. Instead of spending my days anxious over future suffering or avoiding it at all costs, I am finding a new level of trust and peace in what he has for me. As I wrote a letter to a friend who is struggling to belong, fighting identity in Christ, wrestling with the pain of her adoption, I thanked God for giving me a space to prepare myself. It will most likely be my daughter in that place, he could be preparing my heart to walk through this with my child. As John and I have walked several couples through affair and divorce, where I used to be overcome with anxiety hoping it doesn't happen to me, I have traded it for a quiet trust, a trust that knows my circumstance is not at the root of my joy, a Good God is. A God who works all things together for my good, even if that means suffering. It is a freeing place. And although I still selfishly desire an easy, comfortable life, I know deeper that may not be the way God wants to draw me to himself. I am reminded of sitting in a church in Kenya as a man stood up to say "I just need to thank God for AIDS, getting HIV was like gold to me, otherwise I would not know Jesus how I do now." This is the life I want. Grateful in ALL things. Having a new lens and a new perspective to see the pain and hardship we will walk through. So come what may, it is well. I believe He knows, I believe He is good... to me, I believe he works all things for my good and his glory.  Like the words of Mr. Beaver in The Lion, the Witch and the wardrobe, "Safe? said Mr. Beaver; "Don't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the king I tell you."

I've been reading "Every bitter thing is sweet", she challenges a question to my heart, do I simply believe God is good, or do I believe he is Good..to me? Even in my suffering? 
Where are you at in your gratitude journey with God? When have the deepest times in your walk been? How is the theme of gratitude shifting in your journey?

Dear John (a decade of love, struggle and triumph)

Dear John,

I decided to forgo a silly anniversary card that over-optimizes marriage or over simplifies all we have worked at and overcome and fails to mention all God has done between us. Plus, since you know me well, you know I am too wordy to fit what I want to say on a 5x7 card.
10 years, as of today, I have been officially married to you for a third of my life. When I look back at my 20 year old self, having graduated a month prior (by taking two 22 hour semesters to be able to graduate with you;), I thought I knew what marriage was and thought how much I loved you would carry us through any struggle, but I also had a few fears walking down that aisle of what the future would look like when we got to year 5, 7, 10, 25, 35. 

I remember sitting in a chair at Northpoint Community church, hearing marriage is not a contract but a covenant, not an "I'll serve you if you serve me" but being the actual tangible hands and words of Jesus to your spouse. I remember feeling the weight and privilege of what we were entering into. 

People say that when people as young as we were get married they don't know what they're getting into. I've heard people use this as a cop out of marriage 5, 10, 20 years later. We didn't know what we were doing. Obviously...no one does.  We sought counsel and made the wisest decision we could understanding the commitment as much as we were capable.  But, just as if you parent your first child at 22 or 32 or 42, you don't know what you're getting into, because you have never parented a child before. Same as walking down that aisle. Yes, we were so young. But we committed to our God, a choice, a vow and the unknown. We never knew what life would hold for us, but we committed to each other and a love and a God we knew was bigger than any circumstance we would face. 

10 years later, my wildest dreams have been imagined and I've also felt deeper pain than I ever imagined. That's just part of it when entering into life with another flawed human being. If you would have told me at age 20, walking down that aisle, that 10 short years later we would have 4 kids age 3-8, been through 6 moves, 3 churches, an international adoption, 5 international trips with our kids, a ministry partnership in Kenya, counseling, 2 restaurants, and a whole lot of ups and downs I would have laughed in your face! It has been quite the adventure and I cannot imagine what the next 10 holds. 

As we have watched marriages crumble around us, it has brought an ever-present reality to mind. We are not "immune" to struggle, separation, sin. Sure we have done our best to put protective boundaries in place, sought counsel when we have hit hard times, prioritized date nights, been in small groups, gotten away several times a year together without kids. Those have all been crucial in protecting and building upon our covenant. But Satan is still out for us. No amount of boundaries can protect us from that, only the strong power of Jesus. I was talking to Reese in the car a few days ago explaining what separation and divorce are. I told her about how God gives us guidelines and boundaries not to keep us confined, but to protect our hearts and protect us from the damaging consequences of sin. Same for marriage, he has made this beautiful union that can be an amazing, hard, beautiful adventure if we stay within the guidelines he has given us. Just like the CS Lewis illustration of the fish who always dreamed of living outside of the confines of water, until one day he lept out of the "cage" that had been holding him captive only to realize that pleasure was fleeting, and outside his home was only death. He was designed to be in the water, it is not a confine but a boundary to where he can live abundantly. When we step outside those confines, there is hurt, brokenness and sin. We will still sin and have hurt inside our marriage, but nothing like the brokenness that happens outside. So I explained to her, Daddy and I have agreed to choose God's way over our own, even when things get hard and messy. And this is why I try to instill in our kids a heart that loves God's word and way, and to grow their will that can make the right choice in the hardest of circumstance. I hope our home is a breeding ground of small choices will bear fruit into a person who commits to God's way when the storms come. Reese asked, "so why doesn't everyone else just decide to obey God instead of hurt their wife or husband and break that apart?". Self and sin and Satan's lies are a powerful deterrent from the choice we all make at the altar of our marriage. I pray you and I continue to arm ourselves to daily fight that battle.
John, it is so freeing to know your struggles, to know where you continually disappoint yourself and me, to know what makes you tick, to know what you're gifted at; and that you know me all the same. One of my fears in walking down that aisle was that the glitter would soon wear off our relationship and it would no longer be anything to look forward to, there would be nothing else to learn about each other.  What if I wasn't excited to see you come home anymore or get butterflies to see your name ringing on my phone?  I was afraid the excitement of dating would wear off and leave me with a boring relationship. That was one of my biggest fears, but where some of the glitter has faded, security, sacrificial love, transparency, vulnerability and fun has risen in a larger way. There is a safety that comes when you know someone so deeply and you are known deeply by them and accepted. There is a deepness in our bond of friendship that is so comforting.  That beats all the first date feelings to pieces. Because when we are holding hands as we watch a grandparent take their last breath, when we are up until 2 am with friends going through separation, or when our child comes home in tears over a lie they've told, we don't need the butterfly, fleeting flirtatious relationship, we need a rock and shield and a partner who knows you through and through and is ready to go into battle with you. And I am honored to be your battle partner.
I am so proud of the man you are becoming. A man who treats me with gentleness and tenderness, a man who loves our children well, a man who is concerned by those in need, a man who desires to love and know God more deeply, a man who conducts his business with integrity and care, a man who pours into others, a man who loves to give generously, who forgives abundantly, a man who loves to go to the broken places in the world, and a man who can serve well. Your humility is one of my favorite traits of yours. Never do you use your position to put someone down or sit on the sidelines and watch others do the hard work. You have a team mentality; if there is a problem what have we done to get it here? If there is success, you put it back on the team, not yourself. That is present in our family and your business and I think that is why you are successful at both. You lead with wisdom, kindness and a servant heart and thats why you are a leader so many want to follow, including me.
But even on the days when you are not so easy to love; when you're home late, when you don't give me the input I desire in communication, when you disengage or even watch golf on a sunday ;), even then I love you, I respect you, I choose you. In the midst of your faults, I see who you are becoming still and I want to love you into that man. You were created as a fun, wild, tender, courageous warrior and I have the privilege of being a part of your story and that is one of the greatest gifts to me outside of my salvation. 

So 10 years in, I am still here, not because you are worth it, but because He is, not because I deserve happiness, but because Jesus deserves my ultimate devotion and commitment. 10 years from now, Lord willing, I will still be here, loving you when you don't earn it and humbling myself when I mess up time and time again. You are mine and I am yours.
Happy 10 year anniversary my love,