Faithful in the Fray

“God, thank you for my beautiful wife.”

Every night when Jeremy and I sit down for dinner and pray, I wait for that one specific line.

And it never fails, every night, those words are spoken.

It doesn’t matter how nice I look that day or maybe the fact that I’ve gained a whopping 12lbs since we got married. (Excuse me while I put down the cookie and pick up the weights.) He doesn’t care. He sees me as beautiful.  I love that man of mine.

And then we have weekday mornings.. every morning before we leave for work Jeremy wants to give me a hug. I get so annoyed. He normally picks a bad time to lean in for a hug, and sometimes he holds on for too long. Other times I know he will make me late and I’ll have to sit in more traffic if I stop and give him one. Then one day, I was so convicted. I felt the Lord say ‘Sara, why won’t you let him hug you? Why won’t you let the man you love, the man you married, love you? In this moment, nothing else matters.’ I apologized to Jeremy and made it my mission to hug him tight every morning. Who cares if I sit in the car an extra 10 minutes? I shouldn’t. Not when it means I put my husband first.

It’s been three months since Jeremy and I have gotten married. We’ve settled into a nice routine and have almost pulled back enough from the things we were involved in that we can breathe. I cook dinner and he cleans up. I start the laundry and we put the clothes away. He plays Xbox and I pin my little heart out on Pinterest. I ask questions and he thoughtfully responds. We spend too much money at the mall and joke about who knows how long it will just be the two of us. We laugh at the insane things that happen to us on a daily basis. We cry while watching beautiful movies about Sudanese refugees who make their way to Kenya and then to America. We cry because we’ve met people just like them, and we’ve walked in those refugee camps. We lay on the ground in our apartment listening to worship music while talking about how faithful our Father is, and how His love is so much more than we could ever imagine. We dream, big God-sized dreams and can’t wait until He tells us it’s our turn.

We hope. We’ve got lots of things going on in our relationship right now that is allowing us to delight and rest in the Lord. We know that He has every part of our relationship. We know that He has already said yes, and He has already said no. We know that His plan is so much greater than our own. We know that His love never fails and His grace is enough. We know that it isn’t easy, and that it isn’t supposed to be easy. We know that it is worth it. We know that the more of Him we have inside of us, the  less there is of us. We know that He is good.

We’re learning. We’re growing. We’re trusting.

Would you be praying with us? Praying for the hearts of those we come in contact with every day to see Jesus? To know the depth of His love? Would you pray that we would continue to serve the Lord and put our faith and trust in Him even when we struggle? Would you pray that we would learn to extend an unfathomable amount of grace to each other, and every person our eyes connect with?