love – Page 2

Forty Years of Saying Yes

July 9, 2014 by Ann 1 Comment

This past week, my parents celebrated forty years of marriage. Forty years! What an amazing milestone. What an incredible thing to celebrate. We live in a culture that glorifies weddings but often slams marriages. And yet what I have seen through the marriage of my parents is something that both rises above culture and challenges it.

My mom grew up as a pastor’s kid; when my parents were married my grandpa did the officiating, and my dad wore a white tuxedo with a powder blue ruffled button down shirt that spilled out from the lapels. After the wedding my father serenaded my mother on the church steps with “The Sweetheart of Sigma Chi” (the man can sing), and they held a reception at the church with punch and cake.

Their wedding was simple. God was honored, promises were made, cake was cut. In the grand scheme of wedding history and the Pinterest-crazy weddings that now take place, their wedding would have seemed, I can imagine, very unimpressive.

But it is their marriage that has proven impressive. It is their marriage that has proven those simple vows true a hundred thousand times over. And I have been one of the closest witnesses to that marriage.

I lived in a home where my parents spoke love to one another and to us every day. “I love you” rang throughout our house like a bell, the echo of the words always hanging until the bell was rung again.

I lived in a home where my parents did fun things together, where they enjoyed one another. I watched them host dinner parties and also get dressed up for nights out. I loved that they went on dates together.

I lived in a home where my parents talked to one another—and to us—openly and honestly. We had dinner together as a family most nights of the week and we shared our days with one another regularly.

I lived in a home where my parents kissed each other often and unashamedly. There was very little that made me happier as a child than to see how genuinely my parents were in love.

I lived in home where my parents told us that they would never divorce and that they would always be together. I am eternally grateful that they meant it.

I lived in a home where my parents laughed. And laughed. And laughed. I lived in a home where we all laughed together so hard sometimes that we had to pull away from the dinner table to catch our breath.

Is our family perfect? Hardly. Is their marriage perfect? By no means. But for forty years my parents have lived out their promises and their love with faithfulness and with tenderness and with joy—so much joy. They have walked through deep trials, as every marriage does. They have walked through countless changes, as any marriage stretched over forty years is bound to walk through. But they have clung to Christ and to each other, and their marriage is a beautiful representation of the love of Christ and his church.

I am honored to know them as parents and also as friends. And I celebrate you, Mom and Dad. Your faithfulness in marriage has borne great fruit. Thank you for saying yes at the altar forty years ago. And thank you for continuing to say yes to God and to each other every day of those last forty years. I love you both more than I can say.

Filed Under: About, Marriage, Uncategorized Tagged With: 40th anniversary, anniversary, Christ-centered marriage, Christian marriage, Christian vows, family, Jesus, love, marriage, parents, tribute, wedding

The Weightiness of Her Life

July 2, 2014 by Ann 12 Comments

One year ago today, I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it. Practically, yes, I knew I would live. But emotionally, I wasn’t sure how to keep moving forward. Ella was just six weeks old, and I had never known a love as fierce and all-consuming as the love I had for her. But I was also exhausted, and feeling unsteady. We had ventured into this thing called parenting with our eyes as wide open as we thought we could get them: our best friends had kids, and I’d helped Robyn clean up poop and puke more than once. We had been married for seven years, had already changed jobs several times: we knew one another well as spouses. We had the money saved up that we needed for Ella’s birth and medical care. We had been praying about starting a family for years, and I had been praying for my children since I was a child myself.

What, then, was my problem? Why did I feel scared and unsure? Why, when I looked at my daughter, did I both want to melt into a pool of grateful tears and also curl up into the fetal position she had just so recently left?

Well, the lack of sleep was one thing. One huge thing. I had not gotten more than three hours of sleep strung together for those six weeks, and I was tired. Really, really tired. Every new mom knows this, but there is a special kind of exhaustion that those newborn days bring. I’d heard about it, but it’s different to experience that kind of bone-tiredness, and I was not functioning well without sleep.

The hormones were another thing. I knew I had hormones prior to getting pregnant and giving birth, but wow. Wow. The high of having a child had definitely petered out by week six for me, and now I just felt overwhelmed. I felt overwhelmed by her need for me—I had never felt so tethered to another life.

And that weightiness of caring for another life—not one buoyed up in my womb, encased in layers of water and flesh—but here, awake, pink and crying—this felt important. It felt heavy. At times, the weight of her life and my weakness felt too heavy to bear.

I remember crying, and I remember asking Michael if life would ever be the same again. How could he answer? Well, of course not. We had a child. We were now parents. Our lives were unendingly altered. But yes, we would sleep again. And yes, we would gain our sea legs in this vast ocean of parenting. Just not right away. Not right now.

So I had two goals every day: keep Ella alive, and keep myself alive. Ella’s needs, although high, were straightforward—milk, sleep, touch. For me to stay alive was very different. I needed food yes, and I desperately needed sleep. Friends brought meals and family watched Ella while I napped. But I needed hope—and for me that meant getting time with God every day, even when it felt impossible to do anything. I have had friends who also needed medication and counseling, and although I did not need those things after Ella’s birth I am grateful they are available if I ever do. But my first lifeline in those early weeks was getting daily time with God. It often took me until five pm to get even twenty minutes with the Lord, reading the word, journaling my prayers through tears or through drooping eyelids. Sometimes I just turned on worship music and sang along; sometimes I immersed myself in the words of Scripture, hungry for something stable and sure in my life, which seemed unendingly new. Sometimes I just sat and wept, out of gratefulness or out of fear.

And for me, steadily, those feelings of being overwhelmed started to lift. God spoke to my heart that it was not my responsibility to carry the weight of Ella’s life–that was his responsibility. Just as I had not created Ella, I could not sustain her. Her life belonged to him; my call was to love her and delight in her, not carry her life as a burden I could not possibly bear. And I was able to hand to God the things that scared me and the things that I felt unable to hold–I gave Ella back to him, just as she has always been his. I told him, again, that I trusted him with her life. And along with the babysitting from family and the meals from friends and the conversations with my husband, I met God in a new way in that release. He carried me, and he showed me that he was the one carrying Ella.

The Weightiness of Her Life Share on X

Much can change in a year. I have had calendar years in my life where very little changed externally—this was not one of those years. I would not change this last year for anything, but I am also thankful that time does not go back. I am thankful that I have needed to continue to learn that the Lord is the sustainer of Ella’s life. I am called to give my life in many ways so that she might thrive and so that she might love Jesus. But he has already given all of his life for her. I can trust her Maker and mine with this child I was blessed to carry and that I now get to raise. Ella is a gift. Her life is weighty, yes, because she is of eternal value and worth. But I am not her maker. I am not her sustainer. I am her mother. There is a difference.

For me, that difference has been very, very freeing.

So has the increased amount of sleep. That’s helped a lot, too.

This is a #WritingWednesdays post. Think back to a year ago today and write about how you have changed since then.

Filed Under: Baby, God, Life, Writing Wednesdays Tagged With: baby, baby blues, being a mom is hard, burden, Christianity, does being a mom get easier, exhausted mom, faith, feeling unsteady, first six weeks, heaviness, hope, I'm so tired, Jesus, love, motherhood, new mom, newborn, tired mom, unsure about being a new mother, weightiness, why is being a mom so difficult

The Best Day of My Life Was Not My Wedding Day

March 20, 2014 by Ann 10 Comments

I recently had a former student email me some questions she had. She was wrestling through things in that email, big questions about life and living as a woman in our culture, and something she wrote struck me like a bell. She said that our culture points to the belief that a woman’s wedding day–the day those vows are made at the altar–is the best day of your life.

She is single. She is wondering if she will have that day. But you know what she wrote me, what floored and humbled me?

She wrote that she is choosing to believe that the day she vowed her life to Jesus was the best day of her life.

Yes, I say in response. Yes and yes and yes again. And so, here is my response to her:

Yes, the day you gave your life to Jesus was the best day of your life. It always will be.

But first, you must come to terms with the fact that you have not had a wedding day. That day you long for–it was not that. You did not walk down any aisle draped in layers of white, and you did not have a hundred guests watching you pace in time with beautiful music. You did not lock your eyes with a man who had won your heart for months and years, with a man who had paid for a diamond that sparkled like fire on your hand.

You did not stand in front of a priest or a pastor and promise all faithfulness unto death, for richer or poorer, for better and worse.

The best day of your life was not your wedding day. This day is even better. Share on X

You did not have a reception afterwards where you toasted and cut cake and danced and laughed and hugged.

You have not had any of that. I can offer no promises to you that you will have any of that before you die.

But here is what you have had, sister and friend. On that day when you gave your life to Jesus, whether you were four or fourteen or twenty-four: here is what did happen.

You walked down the aisle of your life covered, like me, in the rags of brokenness and shame. Thousands upon thousands of angels looked on and celebrated–God himself, in fact, celebrated your steps toward himself. You looked at the Man waiting for you there–the One who had been wooing you and had finally won your heart over months and years, the man who paid for your life not in diamonds but with his own blood.

You stood in front of him, both High Priest and Shepherd, and accepted him. And then he made promises to you–promises of faithfulness unto death, promises of giving you true riches, promises of never leaving or forsaking you.

And you left that moment clothed in his righteousness that covered–removed–all of those rags you had come to him with. You left as one washed clean and made pure.

The Great Reception is coming–a party that will surpass all others. There, you will share a cup with Him and there will be music and laughter and hugging so rich that all eternity will hardly be enough to contain it.

So yes, that day–that day when you gave your life to Jesus was the best day of your life. It was mine, too.