Almost Two Years

We're coming up on two years of marriage next month. Karl has been working a lot this month, so our anniversary has crept up very suddenly. I am struck by how much we've been blessed in less than two years. We deserve none of it, but God has been so gracious to give it! Karl is my best friend, now more than he ever has been. To think that three years ago, we hardly knew anything about each other. I can't really even remember what that was like NOT to know him. (Amazing really, since we spent most of our courtship and engagement separated, and 10 months of our marriage apart while Karl was deployed.) The fact that we have to tell ourselves to STOP talking at night so we're not both dead on our feet in the morning is a good sign, I think. We enjoy being together so much that his work schedule is absolutely grating at this point!

By the same token, part of God's grace is that he has taught us volumes in this short amount of time. Both of us have been challenged, not simply in the ordinary adjustments to married life (and there have been those), but to have our minds, hearts, and lives conformed more to the image of Christ. I am learning daily, through God's Word and through the faithfulness of older Christian women, how to better be a helpmeet to Karl, how to be content and productive at home, how to continually rejoice in the gift of a new life growing inside of me, and how to consistently love our little boy through training, discipline, and lots of snuggles. It's often a test in endurance and patience more than raw difficulty. I can think of fewer long-term tools in a Christian's sanctification than marriage and family!

Ethan has a great dad! When Karl comes home, it usually spells a moment of relief for me (Ethan usually has a little fussy time just before dinner). He "rescues" him out of his play yard and gives him some daddy snuggle time. Ethan gets so excited when daddy comes in the door. Yet, at this point, I know Ethan doesn't have a conscious clue of the true commitment that his dad has made to genuine fatherhood. He has experienced it, no doubt, since Karl is careful to be consistent in his corrections, but it will be years before he can recognize and verbalize it. He has a dad who will sit down with the Bible and teach us, who will find us good church fellowships, who will struggle with the hard issues and decisions of life in prayer, who seeks out and believes the promises of God, who will humbly serve his wife and children in the example of Christ.

When I found out about Ethan's little brother or sister, I was a little stunned, shall we say, since Karl's deployment had only ended 6 weeks before. As I told Karl, he got a big smile on his face and wrapped me up tight in his arms. Just what I needed at that moment. I think he knew somehow before I told him.

Two years goes by so quickly, as will the next two years and the next and the next. I have been thinking lately how our society has been robbed of the joy of thinking generationally and poisoned instead with the ideas of secularism (only here and now). I know we have a lot to get through even in our own little family, but it gives us joy to look back at the Christian heritage we have in our own families and then think down the road, trusting in God's grace and in his promises, of our children's children faithfully being raised to love the Lord. We're often trained to think pessimistically about such things, to allow for the possibility that our children might rebel, but pessimism merely breeds fear. God's promises to the faithful are true, and we are utterly optimistic!

I'll have to post again for more of that!