One day, I’ll write our story. It will not be a sweeping saga or an epic romance. It will be a real story of a boy and a girl who fell madly in love with one another and somehow, by God’s grace, held on for dear life. Even in these few words though, I don’t feel so much an author as a scribe, recording the thoughts of a far greater writer that have been written on our lives.
Neither of us tended the fields of our hearts the way we should have. Who can without him leading? Yet he still brought us together. Our first years together before marriage, were a whirlwind of long (expensive!) phone conversations, road trips, longing, and momentary joy when we had a weekend together. Stealing time living together in that year I took off, a debt we would have to pay, for the sins of our youth grew brambles in those untended fields.
But mercy and oh glorious day, fourteen years ago! We vowed under and to the God I didn’t serve and you had ignored to love and cherish one another all the days of our lives. And he blessed us anyway, with friends and family to share in our joy as we celebrated. And we danced…with each other, with friends, with family. With your father as he smiled through what we all knew was his last party this side of heaven.
To steal a line from your song, that first year was perfectly clear this was the hardest, easiest thing we would do. But then…salvation! He set fire to our hearts, burning away the bracken and briars. We were baptized together and he sent streams of living water into barren wastelands.
We grew and he continued to pour out his love on us, despite the seeds of old fears, anxieties, temptations sprouting. They grew too. And he whispered “This is going to hurt,” as he tore them out by the roots. And we cried. And I screamed. And smashed more dishes than I care to admit. I raged, and you prayed. You raged, smashing not so many dishes as I. And I prayed.
But mercy and glory, everyday! He is faithful and able to complete that which he began in you, in me. The numbness in our hearts that seemed like endless winter thawed under the warmth of his countenance. And we grew. Under his tender care we grow still.
Set me as a seal upon your heart,
as a seal upon your arm,
for love is strong as death,
jealousy is fierce as the grave.
Its flashes are flashes of fire,
the very flame of the LORD.
Many waters cannot quench love,
neither can floods drown it.
Song of Solomon 8:6-7a
Happy Anniversary my love.
stumblingtoholiness 
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