I am so thrilled to offer you this gift for Valentine’s Day- A STORY.

A story of love done right…of love that lasts…of love that grows more beautiful with time.

A love story about two opposites brought together to create a whole family of passionate Jesus followers.

Because isn’t that the story we all wish for? work for? hope for?

May God keep your hope alive as you read what He did not so long ago for Jay and Michele.

Theirs is a love worth waiting for my dear friends.

From my heart,

Diane

Our Love Story

We were young, passionate, idealistic, and complete opposites. Jay was quiet. I was outgoing. He was laid back. I was the strong leader. He was composed. I wore my emotions on my sleeve. He was the youngest.  I was the oldest.

And our backgrounds just highlighted the fact.

Jay lived in the same house his entire childhood. I moved nine times before leaving college. His parents have been happily married for 42 years. My parents drug my brother and me through a three year divorce that was a living hell. He grew up in a home full of Jesus followers. I was raised in a Catholic/Italian family where church was a box we checked, mainly out of respect for my grandparents. He grew up in a family that was budget conscious and always able to provide. My mom worked two jobs and lived off food stamps with no help from my dad.

But then again, you know what they say about opposites….

­­­­­­­­­­­­­

Michele:

In pursuit of a degree in Intercultural Studies, I set off to Ecuador to work for HCJB Global my summer of junior year in college.  I was hoping to gain experience on the mission field and ask the Lord where he wanted to send me in the future.  I was focused, determined, and hopeful that he had a future for me in his creation.  I was ready to learn a new language, help coordinate short term teams for the summer, and ready to find my place on the mission field.

Jay:

It was funny. I hadn’t yet stepped foot in Ecuador and all the buzz was about some cute girl from my same university.  All the missionaries wanted us to meet – a forced “chance” encounter.  It was the last thing on my mind.  I was headed to Ecuador to work and to serve the Lord.  And the last thing I wanted was to be set up by some odd missionaries.

Michele:

Before I get to the part where I actually met Jay, I will just say that I had lots of opportunities to have met him before.  We both went to the same University in Los Angeles.  We had mutual friends.  Even a bunch of the missionaries I had corresponded with had mentioned him to me.  My prideful self just brushed him aside.  I was out to seek the Lord for my future on the mission field, not find a guy.  Well…so I thought.

Jay:

The first “Michele sighting” was a blur.  It was a fleeting moment, but I still remember it to this day – standing in the reception room of HCJB Global.  We were both on our own orientation tours, and it didn’t take long for us to realize we should spend some time together.

I was setting out on a year-long commitment in Quito.  No friends.  No acquaintances.  Just me.  I quickly realized just how lonely the mission field could be.  And yet there, right in front of me, was a girl from my school – fun, outgoing, friendly.  It was platonic.  I could easily convince myself of that.  Just a great friendship.  A travelling buddy.

And Michele was in no better situation.  She was surrounded by other students in the same internship program – and yet not one of them held her same interests.  She needed a friend almost as badly as I did.

Michele:

We spent the entire summer together learning the ins and outs of an international mission organization.  We practiced our Spanish, explored a new culture, and slowly learned a thing or two about one another.  It was an adventure of a lifetime. Living in Quito allowed us to experience high mountain Andean life and culture.  Yet, a short bus ride away and we could easily find ourselves lost in the rainforest, swimming in the Amazon River, flying into the same remote villages where Jim Elliot set out to share the Good News, or exploring beautiful beaches.

( enjoying Andean cuisine ... aka: guinea pig)

And although we’d stay up late talking about our families, dreaming about our futures, and learning just how different we were, the “us” topic just never seemed to come up.

And so, after ten weeks of incredible adventures together…I left.

I went back home to Northern California. I told endless stories of the adventures I had, how the Lord expanded my awareness of injustice and poverty, how I got to worship in remote tribal villages, praising the Lord in three different languages, worshiping one true God, and….

How I met the man of my dreams.

But that was it.  I was pretty sure I would never talk to Jay again.  I had no intention of emailing or keeping in contact with him.  If he wanted a relationship, he was going to have to pursue me.  (Finally my pride was serving me well!)

Jay:

I’ve always been slow.  The last to catch on.  The last to take action.  So it was no surprise, laying in bed, two days after Michele had taken off – back to the U.S. – that I realized my mistake.  What did I do?  Did I seriously let her leave?

I had nothing to complain about while she was there.  She had become my best friend.  We did everything together.  We knew everything about each other.  But anything further? My mind hadn’t even gone there.  After all, I had what I wanted.  I had her.  But now she was gone.  I was a wreck and I had to do something.  So, as the great romantic, I sent her an email.

Michele:

Four days after arriving home, I received an email from Jay.  I was beyond ecstatic by the fact that there was an email from him.  But I was more excited to read what he had to say.  After much nervous joking in the email, he got to the nitty gritty.  He said, “I think those feelings…yes I have them…are finally kicking in.  I miss you. For a long time I haven’t really known what I thought of us.  But for the first time, in a long time, I think I do.  I miss you and I know we had something special.  Should we consider this a little more?”

Is that romantic or what?

Jay:

Right.  Not romantic at all.  But at least I got her attention.  And she was willing to give our relationship a try.

We were in new territory now.  I still had 8+ months left in Ecuador.  Michele had a year and a half left of school in Los Angeles.  We’d have to make things work long distance. So, I stocked up on international phone cards and settled in for the long-haul.  I was beginning to realize, this girl was definitely worth the wait.

Michele:

We dated long distance for three semesters while I, along with 4 of the best girls in So Cal lived in a two bedroom dump in Orange County (infested with bugs). This was the home of some of my most memorable moments in college. Jay would visit every few months as he travelled back and forth to Ecuador.  And living only 5 minutes from the most magical and romantic place on earth, we’d visit Disneyland often.  But then he would leave and I would have the time of my life with my friends, soaking up all that school had to offer.

Post graduation, Jay was finally back in the States.  He had taken a position with Luis Palau in Portland, and I knew I would have to take a chance and head north if we wanted to see where this would go.  So, my roomie/friend and I journeyed up to Portland for a new adventure…and in hopes that Jay and I would get engaged.

Jay:

We both knew why Michele moved up to Portland.  It was the next logical step.  And now the ball was in my court.  Although she might claim I drug my feet, the majority of my time was spent on trying to find the perfect ring for my soon-to-be fiancée.  And on March 17, 2004, I successfully surprised her with a picnic lunch and a proposal for marriage at Portland’s Rose Garden in Washington Park.  Now it was just a matter of how quickly we could plan a wedding.

Michele:

Although Jay was everything I could have dreamed of, in my heart I really struggled to believe that our relationship would last.  How was I to believe that we were any different than my parents?  How was I to ensure that we wouldn’t be divorced in 10 years?

Because I can’t conceal my emotions even if tried, Jay asked me what was going on in my heart.  I told him my concerns.  With all the love that he could muster up, he sat me down and said:  “If you cannot believe that my proposal of marriage is forever then I am afraid we are not going to be able to proceed forward with our engagement.  I will not marry you with doubt in your heart.”  He left my apartment.  There really wasn’t more to discuss.

That night I poured my face into my pillow and cried out to the Lord.  I wanted so badly to believe him.  I wanted so badly to trust Jay at his word and I wanted so badly to do things right.  I repented of my fear.  As John Mark Comer says, “Anxiety is temporary atheism.”  Did I really believe God to be who he says he is?  That in spite of the ugliness that life may present to our marriage did I not believe that God would win out?  That he would get us through any struggle that would come our way?  That at the end of the day, he would be the restorer and healer of the brokenness that I came from?

That night the Lord changed my heart and I made a choice to not believe the lies that Satan would like me to believe and to be held in bondage of fear of all the what if’s in life.

I choose to believe!  That Jay would be a man of his word, that God would protect us, guide and warn us when we were going astray…just as He had for so many years to the Israelites.

And so with the help of our amazing families and friends, we married on August 20, 2004 in California and also had an Oregon reception in Portland put on by Jay’s parents.

Michele:

Jay and I have now been married for 7 years and have two beautiful boys, Carter (4) & Elliot (2).  Jay works still works with Luis Palau, now as the Creative Director. He is also the co-owner of an up-and-coming publishing company.  He is passionate about the written word.  I get to be a stay-at-home mom and together we are devoted to raising a generation of God fearing men.

I still look at Jay sometimes and wonder how in the world did I ever get to marry such an amazing man of God?  He is faithful, patient and continually points me back to Jesus.  I run to him with my failures and he reminds me of the grace that Jesus has showered over me.  I run to him with my dreams and he reminds me who created them.  I would never have imagined marriage could be so gratifying.

Jay:

And yet, I know the truth.  I so won out on this deal. I could have never expected to marry someone as amazing as Michele. Just as I ground her in truth, she grounds me in love.  She challenges and encourages me to no end.  And she is filled with grace.

Was it all worth it? We feel like we’re bragging sometimes.  No doubt it was worth it.  And the best is yet to come.

Jay and Michele

Almost a year ago, John Mark preached without a doubt the most profound sermon on marriage that I have ever heard. As I sat in the back of the beautiful building downtown listening to my son, I was struck with the rightness of all he had to say. You see, Phil and I have been married now for 33 years. Way back when we first started this journey together, we barely had a clue what we were supposed to be doing. We just knew that we loved each other passionately and that somehow our lives seemed to just click.

As John Mark preached, I finally saw why two completely different personalities could fit so well together. Here’s a little exerpt of what he said:

One of the primary reasons for marriage is mission.

Here’s what I mean by “mission”. God gives Adam a job to do: rule over the earth, work the Garden, take care of the Garden…

We need to recapture a Biblical theology of vocation. Your job is part of God’s calling on your life. In Biblical theology we do not work to live—we live to work…

God wants you to join with Jesus and the people of God and work for human flourishing…

In the story, God calls Adam to a mission. All men need to have a mission. Guys, I should be able to sit down with every single one of you and ask: “What is your mission in life? What has God called you to do? Why did God put you here? And you should be able to give me a short, clear, concise answer…My mission is to…

But here’s the problem: Adam is incapable of the mission by himself.  He needs help. Which is why God says, “I will make him a helper…”

He goes on to explain that the word in Hebrew which our Bibles translate as “helper” is the same word used in the Psalms to describe the mystical way in which God comes alongside us to help us do what we are incapable of doing by ourselves.

But there’s more…

All healthy marriages are built around mission.

Couples that exist for one another are doomed to failure.

If your marriage is about your marriage, it will collapse in on itself. If the point of your relationship is your relationship, it will self-destruct.

Which is why a man has to have a mission before he is married and the marriage needs to be built around that mission…

Women don’t marry a man without a mission. And men, don’t marry a woman who doesn’t want to help you on your mission. Because you need help!

And that explains why I am more in love with Phil today than I was as a starry eyed bride in 1978.  And why two distinctly different people work so well together even when we clash and I cry and get stubborn and fall apart. (a little dose of reality lest you think this is some sort of fairy tale romance!)

When Phil asked me to marry him all those years ago, he had already painted a picture for me of a life I couldn’t wait to embrace.

He knew where he was going and he invited me to join in the task with him. He highlighted the ways in which I could help fulfill that vision, acknowledged his need for what I had and he didn’t, and together we dreamed of a mission that would take both of us pulling at full strength for the rest of our lives.

What woman in her right mind would say NO to that? (of course the fact that he was absolutely hot and drove a souped up 1970 Lemans didn’t hurt either!)

And for all these years we’ve chased down that vision together. We’ve raised our children, outlined our calendar, prepared for our future… lived our lives… all with that vision in the forefront.

And so, some words of advice to women who want a marriage with a mission:

• Don’t marry a man who doesn’t have a vision for his mission.

That said, many men need a woman to come alongside them and help them articulate that vision. There are ideas and impressions swirling around in their heads but they’re not yet able to clearly define what they’re feeling. That’s where you come in! By listening long and knowing him well and using all that fabulous womanly intuitive brain God gifted you with, you may be able to define his vision.

• Don’t marry a man whose vision makes you cringe.

I know of one woman whose husband’s vision for his life included a somewhat bohemian lifestyle. Freedom to move as the Spirit led, keeping things simple, flexible, fluid.

The problems in their marriage started when she insisted that they vigorously prepare for the distant future. Her vision involved hefty retirement accounts and sound financial planning.

Can you imagine the clash?

She’d had no real clue what his vision was before their marriage. He hadn’t sounded a clear trumpet and she would never have agreed if he had. Disaster!

• Don’t try to change a man’s vision.

Yes, you’ll be adding your help, your own vision of the vision. But to try to change where he senses God is leading him will only invite heart breaking discord and discouragement. Some men will put up a vigorous fight- but most men will sadly give up and give in. Yet all the while they’ll resent you. Is that worth it?

• Put all your gifts and talents and education and energy behind his vision.

He needs your help. Without you he’ll never tame that Garden. But with you at his side, lending a woman’s immense fortitude (think pioneer woman!) he will have that rare and satisfying sense that he’s doing exactly what God has called him to do.

And he’ll love you for it!

• Fit your family around that vision.

Too many men end up relinquishing their calling because they’re shamed into believing that it’s selfish somehow to pursue a vision that requires sacrifice on the part of their families. A woman who believes in her husband’s mission makes it the mission of her entire family. And a mother who helps her children adapt and is able to excite her family about their mission together, will find herself surrounded by indescribable joy- and fun and adventure.

A woman like that has an incredible power to make it work.

• Do the next thing.

If you’re a single woman and you’re racking your brain to try to figure out what you should be doing with your life, just DO THE NEXT THING.

You don’t need to worry about what your husband’s vision might be. God has this amazing and mystical way of working all those details out. Go to school, prepare for your future, forge ahead. Trust God to be the one to bring a man with a vision you can embrace.

And so, dear sisters, I pray that God will gift you with what He’s given me:

A man with a vision for his mission,

and the passion to pursue it together.

From my heart,

Diane

(Jodi and Curt)

For many months now we’ve been posting Love Stories on Mondays. We’ve read how beautifully God is writing His story in the lives of His people; men and women who are consciously making choices… and watched God honor those choices.

Most of our stories have been young and fresh… recent glimpses into how God is working.

Today’s story is about love that has lasted… and grown… and thrived.

Jodi is a dear friend of mine- a sister in the truest sense. I love this crazy girl who runs marathons and triathlons and packs more into her week than I’ll ever accomplish in a lifetime.

Most of all I love Jodi’s resilient faith in a God who can do anything. And more than she’d ever dreamed…

Click HERE to read her story.

From My Heart,

Diane

For the next few weeks, in between some great Love Stories, we’re going to be taking a fresh look at four reasons for marriage… and four questions to ask yourself while looking for The One… and four areas which must align in your relationship in order to make a marriage great. Way back in the book of Genesis, God created this thing called marriage.

Right after filling His world with light and land and sun and stars and every kind of creature imaginable, God saw Adam’s aloneness. Every other creature had a match, but Adam, charged with the immense task of managing God’s creation, had no one.

And so God created Eve. Her name means “life”, and with her came a life giving relationship for Adam as well as a beautiful means of perpetuating life throughout God’s massive creation.

But it’s Adam’s aloneness that I want to address today.

“It is not good for the man to be alone;

I will make him a helper suitable for him.” Genesis 2:18

God saw Adam’s solitary life as a “not good” thing. As in negative… a detriment… a strike against him.

But instead of exhorting Adam to let God be his everything, or to find satisfaction in his aloneness, God decided to create a counterpart for him.

Someone who could and would partner with him in his life’s calling.

Someone to spend time with, to talk to, to be friends with.

Someone to chase away the loneliness.

And it gets even better! Scroll down a few verses to Genesis, chapter 2, verses 24,25:

“For this cause a man shall leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.

And the man and his wife were both naked and not ashamed.”

Can you imagine? Two people so at ease with each other that they bare it all. They not only shed their clothes, they take off all those fabrications we wrap around ourselves to hide the imperfections we are so ashamed of.

And that is one of the greatest aspects of this thing called marriage.

Oneness. A complete melding of two people into one. A melding that can only happen as both Adam and Eve trust each other enough allow themselves to be utterly and entirely stripped bare.

And because there was no sin in the Garden, this oneness was able to happen without pain or immense amounts of angst—and it happened instantly.

But because there is so much sin in our world, that kind of oneness can only happen between a man and a woman with a great deal of risk and trust and commitment and trying.

It is this unashamed oneness that is God’s goal in every marriage.

And very few marriages ever get there.

But the ones that do start with real honest-to-goodness friendship. They like each other.

When Phil and I first started dating I was painfully uncomfortable with him. I was so afraid of saying the wrong thing that I could hardly choke out a word!  But before much time had passed, I found myself relaxing in his presence. I got caught up in knowing him and listening to him talk. I asked questions to keep him going, to find out more of what made this fascinating man tick.

Before I ever fell in love with him, I fell in like with him.

And even better, I felt fully myself with him. He was the first guy I ever dated who wanted me to be just who I was.

He liked me!

My quiet reticence didn’t worry him at all. With him there were no long awkward silences with me racking my brain on what to say next. He just carried me along into the conversation and somehow elicited more words from me than anyone had before.

But he also let me be silent. As if somehow he knew that my silence was just a way of processing and chewing on all he had to say.

I loved it!

In fact, I thrived with Phil. I came alive in his company. And for a raging introvert like me to crave another’s companionship is a miracle indeed!

And I saw this same thing with each of my children as they got to know the people who would eventually be their spouses.

When John Mark was with Tammy, he was more real and fully himself than I’d ever seen him be with any of his friends. With her he didn’t need to be cool or upbeat or always his best. I saw him relax, laugh a lot, and talk more than I think I’d ever seen him talk in his entire life!

And with Elizabeth, I saw her blossom. She was more herself with Brook than I’d ever seen her be. He brought out aspects of her character that I hadn’t even known existed.

With Rebekah and Steve, I see a more measured Rebekah. She gauges her responses by looking to his judgment of any given situation. Its made her relax, bringing out all the delightful joy that has characterized her contribution to our lives. It’s as if she needs him in order to be who she really is.

And that’s what I think this idea of oneness and friendship is all about. The freedom to be who you really are.

And so, my advice to anyone and everyone who is dating or thinking about dating…

• First be friends. Be sure you can be friends. Be sure he likes you— and you like him. Not the him you think he could eventually turn out to be… but him just as he is.

• Resist the urge to pretend to be something you’re not. There is no way you’re going to be able to keep up that façade for a lifetime!

• If something makes you uncomfortable about his personality, pay attention. Isn’t that the purpose of dating? Ask yourself, “Can I live with that?” Be honest.

• Date long enough to be sure you know the real person. See what he’s like when he’s mad. Or tired. Or discouraged. Can you live with that man?

• Ask the people who love you the most if you seem to be yourself around him.

• Ask yourself if you are thriving emotionally and spiritually and intellectually and socially when you’re with him.

• Do you match up comfortably? Remember, its not sameness you are after, but oneness.

• Examine your disagreements. What is snagging you up time and time again? Are they fundamental things? Or just the awkwardness of two people trying to meld their lives together?

I can honestly say that my husband is my best friend. In fact, I am absolutely convinced that he is the only person in the world who really knows me as I am.

And the most amazing thing about that is this: he still likes me.

Wanting that with all my heart for each of you,

Diane

What I love about following Jesus is that nothing is random or without hope, not even a house flooded by the upstairs toilet. He can take the most seemingly difficult, challenging circumstances and use it as an occasion to change your life. I know this to be so because that is where my love story begins.

I did not grow up knowing Jesus. I got saved in a bookstore in Chapel Hill, North Carolina at the age of 20. I committed my life to him at the age of 22, when, in a series of very pointed and intimate ways, Jesus showed me that I was not forgotten, that in all the world, He knew my name and loved me. The question that ultimately brought me to my knees was whether I would ever know love in my lifetime. His response to my query was, “Even if you never marry, will you trust me enough to follow me wherever I lead you?” At that moment, I knew that if I said yes, I would have to mean it.

I did say, “Yes.” Through the next several years, pattern by pattern, the Lord began showing me a more excellent way. He was an exceedingly patient Gardener, tending to some very overgrown and untamed shrubs and vines that grew thick around my heart. At times, the pruning was intimately painful and very humbling but I learned, and grace was so fulfilling to a heart that had already wandered.

In that season, the blessing of my life was Jesus Himself. Through rich teaching and fellowship with other believers, He was faithful to build a strong foundation and to clear away the wood, hay, and stubble of my own efforts. As the years passed, Jesus loved me too much to stop challenging me. Instead, He allowed the feelings of rejection that began to isolate me from others to become the fire through which He would prove Himself, skimming off the impurities that had found root deep inside.

Part of the rejection that I felt from other believers seemed based on my marital status. While my contemporaries were in community with each other, I felt very much on the outside of a social club to which I did not have what I needed to belong. I had never really felt compelled to apologize or wave the banner of “singleness,” it was just the fact of my life and all I had ever been. I confess I struggled with bitterness and hostility at having been left out. I also experienced waves of intense and paralyzing loneliness. I’m sure from the outside I looked a bit like a beggar.

I was in my late thirties at this time and had never married, never had children, and never had even a boyfriend. Oh, I had crushes! But in His immense and (probably, at times, exasperated!) patience, He kept His hand of protection closely over me. My way of dealing with this was to roam the earth and look for places to be useful in His name. I learned much about judging outward appearance and how off the mark it can be from what is going on inside a person’s heart. I loved my time with Him in those places. I felt like He was saying, “I can use your life for My glory. Are you willing?”

Toward the end of these years, Jesus taught me to allow Him alone to define me, and in doing so, brought peace and deeper love for my own family.

I stood on the edge of my fortieth year with mixed excitement, relief, and grief, knowing that for me, the question of the hubby, 2.5 kids and picket fence was answered. Honestly, I felt in part like the pressure was off. I was so grateful for the gift that my life had been to that point; the ministry tending to broken bodies and hearts, of traveling to amazing places, of living with forgotten people and the total flexibility of being an unmarried woman loving Jesus. I lived it to the best of my ability and now, I would be free to live it with even more abandon because part of me was not going to be wondering “if” and “when.” And yet, you see, I had never signed up to miss the family, to miss the husband, to miss the kids in all their moments of mess and wonder. All those years, I confess that I hoped but I didn’t live there. In those times, I found Him still loving, still asking, “Will you follow me and trust me?”

As a way to mark the passage of this year and to step out of the boat I decided to do something crazy; this girl from the suburbs of D.C. started climbing mountains. They were breathtakingly beautiful but not easy to reach, becoming a place of transition and the only thing big enough to occupy the complex space in my heart. Every trail, every skill, every step, He met me there. He put me in a community of people who loved me and looked like the church, only they weren’t the church. In a season outside its walls, He showed me what being healthy in the church looked like. Climbing mountains with Jesus changed my life.

Late that summer I found myself on the doorstep of Solid Rock, obeying the Lord’s direction to look for Him there, in the fellowship of believers. In doing so, He gave this weary heart brothers and sisters to enjoy and a family in which to belong. I met some great people at events like First Thursday. I love when people just show up and are willing to pray and be with others, no pretension, no expectation, just “real.” Through the months of showing up, faces became more familiar and those faces became friends of mine.

One of those faces belonged to a man whom I had met at a First Thursday in a small prayer circle. His life had been very different and, in the last several years, he had his own story of faith, survival, and hope. We sat at a hockey game one night with others and talked and then would see each other from Sunday to Sunday. I remember thinking that God had done a good job with him and that he seemed like a nice man. That’s it. Through my learning in those months, I began to realize that one of the most powerful resources that unmarried people have for support and fellowship is other unmarried’s. Satan picks off people the way wolves pick off sheep. He looks for the ones who are weak and alone. He waits and stalks them but there is strength in numbers. When one plus one plus one come together, their strength is in His presence as they gather.

It was this understanding that was the thinking behind an email I sent to this hockey-watching brother one night. It was a short prayer request asking for prayer because I had flooded my home the night before. He wrote back and said he would definitely pray for me. I stayed in the house, living in the upstairs bedroom, eating cereal and carry-out, as my kitchen was down to the studs. (It was kind of fun actually, when I put it in the context of living as a missionary in a foreign land!)

Days passed and a couple of weeks later, we randomly ended up chatting on Facebook. He asked if I knew of anyone who would be interested in going to a concert because he had an extra ticket. Being passed the “dating age” and not worried about what people thought anymore, I said, “Sure. I’ll go.” I went to his home for a hot lunch and we headed to the concert together. As the music blared, we stood together jumping around, screaming, and generally whoopin’ it up. It was a blast! Three weeks later, he invited me to a gathering of friends and kids at his house for New Year’s Eve. We played cards and talked until I left at 11:30. The next day, he invited me over to watch football and we talked and watched “Bolt.” The next day, we drove to the coast to run away and he saved me from a rogue wave that drenched my feet. The next day, he and his son sat on one side of the table at the yogurt place and I looked at them knowing that I was open to whatever the Lord would have in it, or not. There was about a week and a handful of next days and from the outside I’m sure it looked alittle…fast. But at 41 and having prayed and walked, I knew that any list that I might have made up for what I desired in a husband had seriously been blown to bits. Through direct and diverse testing and confirmation, we came to understand that the Lord was doing a work here in our lives and that the sum of our lives together would be greater than each life separately.

What did I see in him? Most importantly, he’d loved Jesus even when it might have been easier not to trust Him. Through His story, I found him to be faithful, exceedingly kind, patient, supportive, and filled with integrity. This man’s testimony is also proven by fire and yet he trusted Jesus in the midst of that fire. I confess that God’s handiwork didn’t hurt and that I find him to be quite handsome, and not least of all, he plays like a kid! Six months and thirteen days later, we married.

Our wedding day was amazing! We shared it with everyone we knew; family, friends, and acquaintances who had walked through the dark seasons with us. We wanted them to know that we love them and that He is faithful and able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think. I’m sure my dad is still in shock.

In the time since that day, I am coming to know more each day of this friend, brother, husband and lover of mine. I imagine the learning will last a lifetime, Lord willing. I know that I am taking each day in its fullness and not taking for granted one of them. My goal as a wife is for my husband to go to bed at night grateful that I’m his wife and that we are together. I love his company so much. When I don’t know what to do, I just imagine that I’m a missionary plopped into a strange land and I ask God why He put me there.

People I know have said, “When you’re ready, God will bring your spouse.” I don’t know that agree with this. I am convinced that any marriage does not come because the bride or groom deserves it but because it is just what God’s grace looks like for them. For some people, their story is that they married young and grew together over a lifetime.  For others, the story is different but no less glorious if it is embraced as God’s gift of a good thing. It’s not that He is scandalized by the questions, but rather, He wants us to bring those questions to Him, spend time with Him, press into Him, and find our worth and value in who He says we are alone.

He was and still is my Boaz and Beloved. Looking back now, I can say is I am so glad that our story is what it is. So many times I wanted to take the pen out of His hands and scribble down the chicken scratch of what I wanted instead of what was His will. I am glad I waited.  God’s story in you of grace and love is His to write on the canvas of your life; in timing, mission, and marital status. Be faithful and let go of the pen. Let Him write it. It will be so much “other” than you can imagine!

Andrea

Because so many of the questions that have come flooding in have to do with finding the “right one”, and because I sense so much confusion about God’s purpose in marriage, and because God’s purpose in marriage has everything to do with who the “One” for you ought to be…I went back to listen to what is the best basic teaching on marriage I have ever heard. It was a message preached by John Mark  entitled “Better To Marry Than To Burn” from I Corinthians 7:7-9. For the next few weeks I am going to expand on the Four Reasons God Created Marriage as outlined in John Mark’s message. But first, let’s take a look at John Mark’s conclusions as to why so many marriages do not end in happiness ever after…

Here’s the problem— I would argue the vast majority of people (including myself) get married to be happy. You may want kids, you may want sex, you may want friendship, but really, the driving purpose is happiness.

You want to be happy.

Now, as docile and innocuous as that sounds, that is actually a travesty. That mindset, that agenda (to be happy) primes marriages for disillusionment at best and divorce at worst.

Here’s what you have to understand: happiness in love is the result of a healthy marriage, not the purpose for marriage.

God creates marriage for friendship, mission, sexuality, and family, and the result is Adam sings! Romance. Love. Emotions! And read The Song of Songs! God celebrates romance!

But you need to get it’s the by-product. The after-clap of the marriage is happiness in love. But it’s not the reason for marriage!

That is why so many marriages never get off the ground. People are going into marriage searching for something that isn’t there. Or is there for a while, but then goes away.

People go from one marriage to the next, to the next (or one relationship, or one experience...) searching for happiness, but it’s not there, or it’s there for a fleeting moment, and then it goes away!

I think Hollywood really puts a finger on the pulse of how people think... “This isn’t working. I’m not happy. I want a divorce.”

But what if the goal of marriage is to be holy, not be happy?

And that, my dear friends, is a whole new conversation.

So for the next few weeks we’re going to be taking a fresh look at FOUR REASONS for marriage… and FOUR QUESTIONS to ask yourself while looking for The One… and FOUR AREAS which must align in your relationship in order to make a marriage great.

Of course I’m not a preacher like my son...

I’m a woman… and a mom… and I’ve raised two daughters whose burning questions for so long evolved around guys and The One and is he him?

And I’ve raised two sons too, whose questions were much the same and yet so different… and one of those sons found his One and the other is still searching…

And perhaps most important of all, I am a wife who has found unbelievable purpose and passion and yes, even happiness, in 33 years of being married to my husband, Phil.

So stay tuned…because next up on the Q&A of Love Stories I’ll be answering questions about the first vital aspect of God’s purpose in marriage: friendship.

If you’re wondering how two people can be friends for a life time, even knowing each other in the worst moments… and what to look for in a friendship that can stand up to real life forever…why don’t you email me your questions?

From my heart,

Diane

I was twelve when my dad died. He was the safety under which I knew freedom and light heartedness. After his second battle with Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and a successful bone marrow transplant, he succumbed to a stroke resulting in a coma. We waited. We prayed. We let go. I will forever remember that day.

It was a cold, foggy morning in November when we turned the life support off. Later when we returned home, I remember waiting long after the house fell silent to slip outside. We lived in a log house in the country, tucked away on seven acres of woods. All I can recall was a desperate need for the sharp cold air on my skin and in my lungs. Finding a private spot, I sat in the light of the full moon and stared up at it blankly. The moon was a symbol of my childhood, innocence, holding all sorts of magic. That night, I prayed it would finally answer a wish, hoping its beams really did possess something magical and supernatural.

As sharp as the air around, so was my awareness. From where I sat, I looked out at the blackness surrounding me. I was tucked in such a small portion of the moon’s protective light. Like a switch, that blackness became darker and alive. The mantel of protection I’d never recognized, the priestly head that had presided over me, evaporated. Fear started to fill the gaps in my chest. Any sense of safety, of security that I had once felt as a child was gone and the darkness crept ever closer.

As I cringed from an invisible force, I felt a pause in the atmosphere and something open. More clearly than I could ever describe, a question probed at my mind.

“What happens to the fatherless girl?”

As if a movie reel in my mind’s eye, I saw a fatherless girl whose heart ached to fill the gap with crude interpretations of love and in the process shattering anything else that remained of her.

I thought, “No. That is not me! I don’t choose that! I don’t want that! Is there another option?”

Then another clip played. Another fatherless girl who removed her heart from any viewing eye, locking it behind thick stonewalls. Her protective shields prevented her from experiencing love to its fullest, causing a stagnation and decay that ate away at her slowly.

Again,

“No! I don’t choose that either.” Hopelessness clutched at my fate, believing that only two options lay before me. “There has to be another,” I pleaded.

“There is,” the answer echoed in my head. “You can choose Me.”

Timidly I wondered, “Well, what does that look like?”

“I can’t show you. You just have to choose. Choose Me and I’ll show you along the way.”

Every day since, I wake up and say, “I surrender. I choose You,” and Jesus has kept His word. I’ve never been alone or abandoned. That night when I made my choice, the darkness died and I stared at the moon with a new kind of promise and purpose in my heart. A promise of His true love and a purpose to learn what true love really is.

Here are a few things He’s shown me, so far, from “along the way”.

I’m twenty-four now. God is more tangibly my father than my memories of my earthly one are. There are so many lessons where He’s stepped in to teach me and challenge me to learn the things my dad wasn’t here to show me. Together, God has taken me on many adventures that have allowed me to travel a bit, accomplish some, see a little and change me a lot.  Most of that has been just the two of us. Some might call that being “single”. “Single” denotes isolation, wanting, aimlessness.  However, that word has a lonely connotation which simply doesn’t suit a daughter of God.

It wasn’t until I was twenty-one that I went on a real date. The few experiences I’ve had of that nature since have shown me a certain value in being purposeful in my singleness.  As the vast majority of us ladies, I too desire to be married with a family. Truth is though, at the moment, I’m not. So what are we told to do in the mean time?

Wait.

Problem is, we take that word and don’t know what to do with it

When I hear, “wait”, I immediately conjure images of standing in line, arms crossed, sighing and checking the clock every thirty seconds only to see it move counterclockwise. But we stand there, in line, waiting, because we believe there is something at the end of it. We practice faith here. In faith, I know God has someone for me and I trust that He will prepare us and bring us together. Faith, though, will always give you something to do and trust takes action.

When we watch a chick-flick, ooh and aah over a romantic story, daydream about perfect moments, our hearts flutter over long looks and tender words. The feelings that we associate with this would make us feel cherished and beautiful. We’re building expectations of how we want to BE loved.  Yet, how often do we daydream about how TO love? I had a lot of ideas on how to appreciate me, but not on how to appreciate someone else. Several of us have a list of qualities we appreciate in a man. (Side note of wisdom: Remember to keep that list as things you appreciate, not expectations.) It’s time though, to start working on our lists of what kind of wives we want to be and the loving homes we want to make. Let me show you where I began with this list.

Remember the two images of a fatherless daughter? One clutched for love, the other cringed from it. All along, it’s never been about searching for love, nor hiding from it. It is about choosing TO love every day. Since the Bible says, “…for God so loved the world, He gave…” (John 3:16), then by learning to give is how I will learn to love.

So I ask myself, do I really have the capacity to give inexhaustibly and unconditionally as God has? That’s a big “no”. In pursing Jesus and exercising that kind of generosity in my daily interactions and relationships, however, I will learn. This is where I came up with what I call a new kind of Hope Chest.

Most might recall what a hope chest is if you’ve ever watched period piece movies. A hope chest was a trunk in which a young hopeful woman would collect things for her future home. The day she’d leave her parents’ home and move to her husband’s house, from her trunk she’d unpack carefully crafted and embroidered things to decorate her house, making it a home, warm and inviting. Prayers, dreams, and hopes went into that chest. Still, it also represented the skills she mastered and the time she invested.

The fashion of the day doesn’t necessarily call for embroidered cushions and crocheted doilies, but the intent of preparing for our homes is still a prevalent need. In fact, God gave us the Proverbs 31 woman as an illuminator to treasures in a well stocked Hope Chest. Check out Proverbs 31 and dissect it for yourself. For now, here’s an abbreviate version of a few things I found in this treasure chest.

Practical things include learning how to cook. Cook for two, cook for twenty. How to plan a meal ahead and always have something for you family to eat. Learn how to host and be a gracious hostess.  There are many basic things like how to clean, do laundry, iron, mend clothing. Then take all these things and learn how to do these them regularly, working them into a routine. Don’t forget the kids. We need to learn how to care for and teach children of various ages.  Care for our health and bodies, dressing in way that honors and glorifies God. How about learning how to handle finances- make payments, budget, save money, save coupons, pre-plan shopping, to bargain shop and so on.

That list goes on. It wasn’t enough that she knew how to do certain things, but she knew how to manage and run a household. Where do we gather these things from? We have a wealth of wonderful godly woman at church, in your family, in your community as guides and examples.  There is some rich wisdom and many skills hidden an arm’s reach away from you.  Ask. Seek. It wouldn’t be treasure if you didn’t have the courage to hunt and work for it. Then listen, listen, listen and practice, practice, practice.

This Hope Chest doesn’t just stop with the practical though. Interlaced with the accomplishment of Proverbs 31 woman, are many less obvious traits that take longer to cultivate.

Learning how to be engaged and engaging, how to be an encourager, discerning, gracious, peaceable, diligent, self-disciplined, judicious, modest, trustworthy, grateful, compassionate, servant hearted, wise; have respect and fear of the Lord; how to respond to and follow authority; to be faithful and loving. (See Proverbs 11:16, 22: 21:9, Act 9:36, 1 Corinthians 11:10, 1 Timothy 2:9-11, 3:11, Titus 2:2-5)

It can seem daunting, in fact, impossible.  Having this list is not an absolute mandate, but more of a guide. We work on these things our entire lives (Remember that your Prince Charming will not be perfect either or have a completed list and will be continuing to grow. I put graciousness on that list, right?). Rarely is something of great value ever attained overnight. The point is not to check off lists. Instead, single or not, right now we’re fulfilling God’s purpose for us as women, as life givers.

In the meantime, here’s a picture of what you are working towards by investing in this Hope Chest and how to use it in the mean time.

In Singleness Purpose: Recipient(s)- Everyone you will ever encounter. Problem with the Hope Chest idea is we might get stuck in thinking it is solely reserved for marriage. Truth is though, as much as we continue to add to it, we also give from it. That’s how it grows. My entire life I will always be pouring into this trunk. I hope, when I am old and gray, its latches are as worn out as the pages of my Bible. The handy thing about it too, is that neither moths nor rust will destroy its contents (Matthew 6:20). Right now I get to practice these things with my friends, my family, the stranger in the coffee shop, the kid on the curb, at work, at school, at play. I will continue to practice long after wedding bells have rang too, because I keep in mind that marriage isn’t my ultimate goal. Marriage will one day impact how I travel on my journey, but it is not my destination.

Marital Purpose: Recipient(s)- You, your husband, and children. When the honeymoon ends and marital bliss flies out the window, you’re exhausted and your husband comes home about to take his bad day at work out on you, you press the pause button and reach into your Hope Chest. From inside, you retrieve empathy, a listening ear and heart, encouragement, prayer, and comfort. You don’t have to learn it on the fly because you’ve practiced it and stored it securely with care. You’ve also made a home that is a place of safety and rest, an oasis, which you both can retreat to after long days and crazy lives. When you are unable to give of yourself, you have a treasure of strength to draw from in order to love selflessly.

One of the things I remember about my dad is how he was both a dreamer and a doer. Being the first in his family to not only graduate high school, he also went on to put himself through Civil Engineering school at O.S.U. with a wife and child. I watched him dream and do with my mom, and how they rose and fell when they tried them out. He would set his mind on something and worked away at it. Some of that, I hope, transpired to me. Per his example and Proverbs 31 woman, take what is important to you, are your passions and interests, and pursue them. For example, going to college without loans was a priority for me, so this March, after five years of study and hard work, I'll finish my undergrad from P.S.U., debt free. Using that education and experiences abroad, I've been a private foreign language teacher during the last two and a half years. Even being at Solid Rock and all the amazing opportunities here have challenged me and touched my love to serve. There are a handful of various things that I enjoy and dream of, but the point is that I try to explore and invest in them.

Waiting isn't stationary, as we might believe. Have you ever heard, "you'll meet the man while you are doing what you are passionate about"? I have heard it too. Regardless of his arrival though, life is waiting to show us all its hidden treasures and the woman we can become, along the way, as we serve and fall in love with our Creator. Follow God's pulse in your heart. Proverbs 31 woman was a passionate woman, an adventurer who tested her limits and explored her talents. God designed and created talents, gifts and interests in you to discover, enjoy and learn to know Him through. We are made to be life givers, but it takes being full of life first. Pursue Jesus. Challenge your interests. Develop your skills. Invest in your character. Edify others before yourself. Discover a great and true love.

Our journeys will look different from one another. We are all traveling towards one Man, though. His heart is the one I want to capture.  “Along the way” He may have someone for me to travel with. In the meantime, every day I will wake up to surrender to Jesus and to choose Him. Each day I do this is a day He will use to cultivate things in my Hope Chest. When I loose myself and am distracted away from Him, He meets me, sometimes beneath that same moon, where Jesus reminds me of how He’s been my ever present, faithful Father, constant Companion and the Lover of my whole being. In the winter of my life, I will be able to look back and see the fullness of true love from my life as a single woman.

The truest Love you will ever know already resides with you.

Jamee

Misty Edwards sings “Arms Wide Open” that really resonates with this story. I hope you enjoy.

09 - Arms Wide Open

A couple of weeks ago I wrote my take on the concept I hear bantered around quite a bit: The One. And since my answer rambled around quite a bit, with no iron-clad-chapter-and-verse-verification that what I’m saying is RIGHT!! I think I frustrated a few black and white thinkers. Some of the questions I encountered via email the following week revealed lots and lots of misunderstanding of this whole idea— and all the worries and pressures a lot of people are feeling in the midst of trying to figure it all out.

There seem to be two sides:

On the one hand, those free thinking folks who believe that God is gracious enough to give us generous room to choose for ourselves. This group generally views God’s will as less specific and more conceptual. Their advice tends to be somewhere along the lines of “just pick one” and go for it. Their only clear guidelines would have to do with overtly biblical mandates such as a shared faith and good character.

And I agree… sort of.

The other side of the compendum is much more mystical about the whole thing. Soul mates and perfect fits and “just knowing” when you meet him/her and other such nebulous ideas. These folks are constantly asking the question, “Is this The One?” The danger here is that whole game of trying too hard to be a perfect fit instead of relaxing into the rest that comes when we fully trust God to use even marriage to shape us into His image.

But I don’t think either view is quite right.

Most of us, when we “fall in love”, are so ferocious about our feelings that we’ll do about anything to convince God and everyone else that THIS IS GOD’S WILL FOR MY LIFE!! We believe that first and foremost, God’s will is to make us happy. Very happy. And so if this one makes us happy, then of course, he/she is most certainly the one for me. So help me God.

But since after years and years of delving into the stories of Scripture and God’s commentary on those stories, I just cannot quite see God’s will as a the Happiest Place on Earth, that theory just doesn’t work for me.

I don’t think marriage is actually so much about me being happy as it is about me serving my Savior in His unique role for me in His story.

And maybe that’s why opposites so often attract. Because what he lacks is the very thing I bring into the relationship to make him better equipped for carrying out his part of God’s story.

And visa versa.

Just this week both Phil and I had encounters with a couple in our church. Their marriage caused no small amount of controversy and conflict within their extended families just because these two couldn’t be more opposite. He’s driven and scholastic and intense. And so is his mom- an amazing woman who rose to the top of her career by determination and drive. But the woman he married is neither driven nor intense. Her education didn’t extend beyond high school. Her goal in life is to make her husband successful by creating a home that is a place of refuge- and by giving him full freedom to pursue his dreams even if they cost her. She has no intention of making a name for herself or impressing anybody.

The family finally gave their consent, if not their wholehearted blessing, and now a couple of years have passed.

What Phil and I both saw when we talked to them was an unusual and delightful sense of rightness about this pair. They laugh and tease and look at each other with that secret “I know what you’re thinking” sort of snicker. They know exactly where they’re headed- together. There is this sense when they’re talking that they have learned to pull in the same direction without insisting that they be the same. So right.

It is their very differences that make oneness possible.

Their personalities and giftings are vastly different, but their goals are the same.

And that, I believe, is the key to this whole THE ONE question. Finding a person who shares your goals, or whose goals you share (and yes there is a difference) is vital to making a marriage work the way God originally intended.

Two people pulling in tandem is a beautiful and rare sight.

The One, then becomes the person you can embark on this journey towards oneness with. And for most of us, that journey involves no small amount of hard work and effort to achieve- and will most certainly take the rest of our lives.

From my heart,

Diane

When I was thirteen, God told me I was going to marry Ian.

That was also when God began speaking to me through dreams. I hadn’t originally asked God to show me who my husband would be, but I woke up one morning after having an incredibly vivid dream of my wedding day. When my groom turned around to greet me, I saw his face.

It was Ian Nelson’s face.

That's a lot of information for a thirteen-year-old to keep inside--for five illegal years. Although I had doubtful “Gideon moments” (Judges 6:36-40), I tested, waited, and trusted that God knew what He was doing (brilliant idea, I know).

As an eighteen year-old worship leader in my youth group and a close friend of my big sister’s, Ian and I were nothing more than “pals”. He was my guitar teacher. He took my sister to his senior prom. We don’t remember the moment we met. And he was five years older than me! Even though we were just friends (and not only because it would’ve been creepy if we were more…) there was obviously an unusual connection between the two of us. I’m pretty sure everyone saw it, but no one understood it. We didn’t either.

I remember conversations that took place in my parent’s living room between us friends—OK, so maybe I was the tagalong—about the kind of person we wanted to marry someday. Ian was part of that group and I was sneaky. I’d compare what he said in those groups to qualities he’d already pointed out to be some of my strengths. I paid such close attention to him because, in the back of my mind, I was testing what I thought God had spoken to me.

(Ian, 18 Me, 13)

Ian went away that summer and we wrote each other letters in order to maintain our friendship. But when he came home in August, things began to change. We decided that since I was going to be in high school now, the stage in life where the once innocently significant age gap between us began to shrink and things would start to look weird.

Ian started dating someone and so did I.

[Enter the three-year period of awkwardness]

I was embarrassed that I was so quick to believe that a couple of meaningless dreams revealed my future. I was embarrassed that I’d confided this to my mom. I was embarrassed at the thought of Ian finding out.

Somewhere though, in the deepest crevices of my heart, I was certain that it was God who had spoken to me

“Let us hold tightly to the hope we profess, for He who has promised is faithful.”—(Hebrews 10:23)

and that in the end, I would end up spending my life with Ian. Things had changed so much though, it was going to take a miracle!

Sure enough, two years later, during the summer before my senior year of high school, we began connecting a bit more over the death of a mutual friend. We talked to each other about everything and saw each other regularly. During that time, I remember sitting outside on the curb next to him. He asked me “At what point do you think we’ll no longer be in each other’s life?” I responded with a long pause and then an “I just can’t picture that ever happening.” He agreed.

In December 2007 I started getting signs that Ian was interested in me. It was easy to tell since he paid so much attention to me! I didn’t dare say anything though, and I didn’t let him treat me like his girlfriend (hanging out every time he wanted to/sit by him/let him pay for my coffee, etc.)

Two months later, in February 2008, during my last year of High School, we both went on a church trip to Israel. We sat by each other on the plane, and then on the bus. I was embarrassed that he was being so obvious in front of everyone without having talked to me about it first, but it didn’t bother me enough to reject his company on a long bus ride : )

We stayed up late, walking and talking, and on about the third night of the trip, on the beach overlooking the Sea of Galilee, he finally admitted that he had “big boy feelings” for me. Yes, those were his actual words. Then he sat me down and listed all the things he loved about me and the reasons he knew his feelings were real. (He says now that at that point his mindset was “if this girl will have me, I’m going to marry her.”)

I acted surprised and tried to hide my smile.

Even though I was nervous to finally be faced with my dream in the form of reality, and even though things had changed so much over the years, God helped me desire what He desired for me--the very thing He’d promised me five years prior.

After that conversation we planned to date as soon as I was done with high school.

That was in February and in April I started getting cold feet selfish.

I was barely eighteen and not even done with high school.

I was two months away from starting a dating relationship with the guy I knew I was going to marry.

Do you know what that feels like?

I knew that once our relationship started, that was it.

Us dating = us together forever.

I told Ian everything and he was heartbroken, but we still had two months until we made things official so it was not yet a public upset.

As soon as I got over myself we were able to move forward (funny how that works).

And on my last morning of school, I walked out to my car to find three dozen pink roses and hundreds of gold-foiled chocolates sprinkled all over the seats. On the driver’s seat was a little picture of our heads glued onto a picture of a male model carrying a female model on his back. At the top of the picture were the words “Will you be my girlfriend?”

I called him later that day and [obviously] said yes!

He came to my graduation with a bouquet of flowers. I think we were both giddy…

We dated for another nine months (June 2008-February 2009) and on February 27th he proposed! He got down on his knee at our favorite park in Corvallis and then we rode off to the beach in a limo!

(Right after he proposed)

On a rainy day in September 2009, the clouds parted and the sun shone down on us as we made our vows to God and each other in front of all of our friends and family. We just celebrated our two-year anniversary and we still love life together!

Looking back on our relationship used to make me feel funny, but now I think of it as “special”. I am so glad everything evolved the way it did and that we get to spend forever together!

Journal entry to my future husband 11/11/03 (age thirteen):

I wonder if I know you right now, at age thirteen. That would be so weird to look back and see what our relationship was like at this age. I may not even know you until college.

January 21, 2004:

I had a dream the other night. It was abut my wedding day. I saw everyone’s face. Including yours!

January 25, 2004 (three days after I turned fourteen):

I think that God has revealed who you are to me. It is hard to think of getting married to you if you are who I think you are. But I think that God is molding my heart to first love you as a brother and a friend so that one day I can best love you as my husband.

July 26, 2005:

Ian, you broke up with your girlfriend a couple of days ago and I was completely shocked! During the time that you two were dating, the Lord was doing an incredible work in me regarding my faith and trust in Him. When you guys first started dating, I was beginning to doubt that God had truly spoken to me. Then I finally came to the realization that He is in control and He can do whatever He wants and if what He wants is for you to get a girlfriend to see if I still trust Him, than He will do so. Since I have to come to the realization that it is OK for God to work this way, He has broken you two up.

June 23, 2008:

We just went on our first date and you kissed me and told me you were in love with me. Instead of returning the compliment, I asked how you knew and your answer was “Because I can’t imagine living life without you.”

September 3, 2009 (two days before our wedding):

I can’t believe that I’m already here—writing a real letter to my real husband-to-be! You are the love of my life and I am so grateful that the Lord brought us together!

I think the moral of our story is to trust God and let Him work out the timing. We’ve all tried to get ahead of God at one point or another, and not just when we think it is “of Him”. Whether you know, or you don’t know, or you wish you did or didn’t know; ask, listen, and then trust God. I was so certain and yet still worried about this for five whole years of my emotional teenage life! It’s not worth it. God designs the most beautiful scenarios and then we spoil them with our impatience. Just don’t do it.

Sarah

Over and over I get asked the same question: how will I find the one? And as if that isn’t worrisome enough, a whole host of queries come tumbling all over the unknown.

What if I miss him?

What if I marry the wrong guy?

I don’t think I’m worthy of THE ONE anymore, now that I’ve messed up with that one who is so obviously not it. What now?

Don’t I need to go ahead and marry this guy now that I’ve given him all of me?

What if THE ONE marries someone else? Am I destined to singleness for the rest of my life?

I’ve met my SOUL MATE but he is unhappily married to someone else… doesn’t God want me (us) happy?

THE ONE has been elevated to superhero status in many of our minds. He’s the romantic hero, the spiritual giant, the perfect specimen of physical beauty.

Confusion and unrest reign in this realm of fairy tales and happily-ever-after endings.

And so women create their lists and cross men off at an alarmingly confident rate. They turn down coffee dates because he certainly couldn’t be THE ONE. They snub young-men-in-the-process before knowing much more than the unfortunate fit of their not-skinny-enough jeans.

He doesn’t have style… he’s too awkward… gross, he has acne!

I wonder sometimes if THE ONE eludes these idealistic romantics simply because of bumpy skin and unfortunate taste in clothes.

And so I’ll attempt to give my answer to the question every girl seems to be secretly wondering: is there really THE ONE?

Yes… and No.

Yes, I do believe that the Bible indicates that God has so pre-written your story that He’s got a plan for even such events as the rest of your life.

Take the story of Rebekah and Isaac.

Isaac’s dad (that would be Abraham) sends his best friend/faithful servant off to do a little bit of pre-internet searching for a soul mate for his son. He doesn’t need to fill out questionaires to know what kind of woman the boy-man needs— the guy has known Isaac since he was in diapers. He knows all about the career Isaac is being trained for, the calling on his life, the complexities of his personality.

So he sets about to find THE ONE, confidently believing that “the God of Abraham” has this fully arranged already.

Abraham has given his friend scant criteria for finding a wife for Isaac. Basically two things: 1. Not a woman of a different faith. 2. Not a woman who will divert Isaac from his calling. (see Genesis 24:1-9)

This matchmaking man stumbles upon a well somewhere in the vicinity of what he believes will be a likely spot to find Isaac a bride. And then he prays a crazy-let’s-get-this-over-with-quickly prayer. (So like a man! A woman would have let the search go on and on, adding all sorts of romantic tension to the story…)

Yet his prayer is curiously insightful. This servant knows that Isaac’s career and calling is far from the ordinary house in the suburbs kind of life.  He’s going to need a woman willing to work hard alongside him, someone with initiative and drive who sees what needs to be done and hops to it without a lot of prodding.

Bingo! Rebekah comes along and “she’s very beautiful” and obviously available (vs. 16) and she fits the profile perfectly. The next thing you know, she’s on her way to Isaac’s honeymoon suite (actually his deceased mother’s tent!) with this blessing ringing in her ears,

“This matter comes from the LORD…

Behold, Rebekah is before you, take her and go

and let her be the wife of my master’s son,

as the LORD has spoken.”

And the story just keeps getting better and better…

“Then Isaac brought her to his mother Sarah’s tent,

and he took Rebekah,

and she became his wife;

and he loved her…”

(and that, for all my naïve young friends, is Scripture-speak for saying they had a humdinger of a honeymoon!)

So… what’s all this have to do with THE ONE?

Take a look at one easily overlooked phrase in the story: “let her be the woman whom my LORD has appointed for my master’s son.” (vs. 44)

The woman whom my LORD has appointed for my master’s son can mean only one thing:

She’s THE ONE.

And so, yes, I do believe that there is ONE appointed to be the wife/help meet/counterpart for a man.

And of course, the opposite must also be true.

Every Rebekah has an Isaac in the wings, ready to sweep her off of that camel and into his tent when the time is right.

HOWEVER… I also believe that most women and a whole lot of men have some pretty messed up notions about how that story is supposed to play out in their post-camel lives.

I do not believe in soul mates or happily-ever-after endings or perfect fits.

I believe that God brings two people together in order to show the world what it looks like to be loved well despite unfortunate flaws and a life time of failures.

I believe that God brings two people together who will rub up against each other, filing away sharp angles and re-forming both into beautiful and usable souls.

I believe that God brings two people together for the express purpose of advancing His Kingdom plans through their union.

I believe that God brings two people together with the clear intent to make each of them holy… but not necessarily to make either of them happy.

And yet with all of that I remain a hopeless romantic!

Thirty-three years ago, Phil swept me into his world and offered a life unlike anything I’d ever imagined. At times it has been hard. And lonely. And choked with people’s needs. At other times it has been exhilarating and satisfying.

But over the years God has carved a unique oneness out of two stubbornly individualistic people. We are headed in the same direction, we have the same goals, and the same spirit.

Phil has pushed me way beyond my comfort zone. He’s widened my world and led me compellingly. He’s created for me a rich life in which to grow and flourish. In turn, I have calmed Phil down, brought a semblance of order and beauty into his sometimes frantic lifestyle. I’ve made a safe place for him to rest.

We have both had to choose to lay aside our selfish ambitions and idealizations in order to get to this place in our lives.  We do not “fit” perfectly together. In fact, we clash and rub each other wrong and hurt each other’s feelings. We work hard to understand each other’s viewpoint… and we fail frequently.

Does that sound like soul-mates? Or more like two people fully committed to the LORD and to bringing Him glory by loving each other well at some very real cost to ourselves?

Phil and I could have had a terrible marriage. We could have dominated and dug in our heels, grown bitter and apart. And at times, we’ve done all those things. Yet there is this One whom we call our Redeemer who, when invited and listened to and obeyed, creates oneness and beauty out of the thousands of fragments of brokenness we bring at His feet. His name is Jesus, and when it all comes down to the nuts and bolts of real-life romance…

He and He alone is…. THE ONE.

From my heart,

Diane

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God... Romans 8:28

To preface this, let me just say I grew up far from the church. So this is not the story of one protected by the guardrails God intended. I made several-- dozens, actually-- mistakes before I found the one man I was always meant for, my husband Ronnie Cecil.  But what I hope you get from what I share is this: if you, like me, have a less than pure past in the realm of love, God can still redeem your story. I adore Romans 8:28 because it has been so true in my own life: The Lord can truly work all the things for good...all things, including a divorce; including getting pregnant outside of marriage...

It was Christmas day, 2007. I sent him a poem. We were not close enough friends for me to share all that was on my heart, but in the poem I hoped he would here me saying: “I get you; I get where you’ve been.”

His Christmas letter, sent out in an email, confessed the pain of his divorce and the chaotic experience of wandering through life unsure of who you are. It also shared a hint of Spring returning- a deep gratitude for days spent less miserable than before.  I had never been divorced because I had never been married. But, I knew the dark pit he was talking about, because I had landed there too, my womb full of unexpected life by a man who had no intention of loving me or fathering the life within me. I also knew the glory, the relief, and the great gratitude of days not confined to pain and misery anymore.  Single motherhood is awkward, the way divorce is akward: no one knows how to talk to you about it, especially religious people. But in living life as a pariah, after you go through a season of incredible darkness and self-destruction, you gain a certain character strength, humility, and intimate awareness of your own deep brokenness, and the reality that despite all the muck and mire of your life, some beauty within still remains.

In our shared social imperfections we soon found comfort and freedom in a rekindled friendship. We also saw glimpses of God’s mercy.

The poem I sent was from T.S Eliot’s East Cocker, with the infamous last line that says, “In the end is my beginning.”  I didn’t know that T.S. Eliot was a Christian or that later I would become one too, or that what he was pointing to in his poem was the miracle of God’s redemptive work; that when we come to the end of ourselves, God can and does act to work all things for good.

I also was wonderfully unaware that indeed a new beginning was unfolding in both our lives: the beginning of us.

Flash back to 2004: We met on a blue-sky morning near a building made of adobe in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I was starting my year as a Grad student in the Eastern Classics Master’s program. My hair was strawberry blonde, and in a few shorts weeks I would experiment with dying it barbie doll white. I was 24, six years away from knowing God, ready to learn Sankskrit and drink a lot of beer with interesting, worldly, and good-looking people.

Ronnie was the husband of a girl he had met at church camp when he was 19 years old. He wasn’t a student at St. Johns, but his wife was, and all of us became part of the same dear circle of friends.

A year later, as soon as I had graduated, I moved to California. Ronnie and I gradually lost touch.  My life started to unravel when I found out I was pregnant and the father of the child was heavily into drugs. I didn’t know his life had begun to unravel too. The very first love of his life, his wife of 6 years, didn’t want to be married anymore.

Flash to 2007: When Ronnie and I reconnected, thanks to a rouge invite email from Linked-In, life had dramatically reshaped us both. He, who along with his wife used to drag me to church and read me the bible, had now lost his religion and his trust in God’s goodness and was desperately seeking to regain some faith while climbing the corporate ladder in Birmingham, England. The bottle blonde he once knew, the one who bubbled and bounced and lived for the party, had grown out her roots and was now managing life as a single mother in Portland, Oregon.

As imperfect people painfully aware of the folly of being human and hungry for God, we bonded. Immediately we knew each other as kindred spirits, both having been thrown crazy curve balls by life.

Despite the 4,287 miles of continent and ocean between us, our connection and friendship grew. We began to notice something dear in one another we had not noticed before, and then one day—on opposite sides of the globe—we both woke-up, utterly in love.

In the time between that poem I sent him in December of 2007, to his response of a simple ‘thank you’ 4 months later, in April of 2008, God was patiently preparing in each of our heart’s room for the other. Both of us had experienced the end of “life as we knew it”. In that great desert, in that Land Between, we walked side by side, unaware of how our paths were colliding. As if overnight, our lonely deserts merged and came to their end in each other, at the fertile soil of a shared, new beginning.

That Spring, the whirlwind began. Falling in love long distance was very literally a poetic experience: nearly every hour we spent awake and without one another, a love note was written. From May 2008 until September we exchanged more than 1,500 e-mails, hitting “send” 500 times a month, 125 times per week, 17.5 times per day. When we were married less than a year later at a bar in Kentucky, it seemed long overdue.

Even though married life started out quite unideal (we were poor, without family or community, thrust into a new house in a new state, suddenly parents trying our best to raise a 2 year old together, just beginning to learn each other’s intimacies and love languages, inching closer, but still far, from God) we were doing okay.

At the beginning of our marriage, we were consumed by the goodness of an abstract God through our burning love for one another. Both of us recognized personally we had been given amazing grace, but neither of us knew or lived to follow Jesus. For sure in the the way our hearts broke with gratitude for the redemptive love we now shared, we felt the power of redemption. But standing near the Lord of Redemption-- even being immensely blessed by Him--is not the same as surrendering your life to Him. And a marriage without Jesus, even when two people are ridiculously in love and devoted to one another as we were, is not a marriage that stays strong for long.

As quickly as our love ignited, our marriage began to crumble. I say a deep thank you now for just how horrible our 1 year anniversary was. The conditions in our life in those days made our need for Jesus as newlyweds undeniably plain. Mercy it was that we could not lean entirely on our fairytale love to make it. Mercy it was that my husband’s start-up business failed magnificently and we could not afford the distraction of material comforts. Mercy it was we had no family to run home too and take shelter in. And mercy perhaps even it was that the depression I had struggled with on and off for years, began to return.  The hopelessness of our poverty, our loneliness, and my husband’s joblessness, compiled with my own darkness within, brought to light the biggest obstacle we faced in our relationship.

Neither of us knew the absolute, the protective, the all-things-are-possible love of God. We worshipped each other until we learned that human love in and of itself was never meant to be worshipped.

Fear crept in that life was too much; that our love, our marriage, would eventually break under the relentless weight of being human. Deep down I feared that I was too much. The baggage of all my past brokenness-- the sexual abuse that held my body in shame, the seasons of drug addiction and eating disorders that still terrorized my mind, my unshakable bent toward self-destruction-- the residue of all of it began to show up at the door of our marriage and the lies the Enemy fed me on who I was and what I was worth, I believed. Instead of trusting in my husband and the vow he gave me to love me for better or for worse, I shut him out and pulled away.

The hardest part about marriage for me was not learning how to pour love out, but learning how to receive love being poured in; to let myself be loved not just for a theoretical brokenness, but for an actual brokenness. The learning how to let my husband sit with me when I am consumed by an inner ugliness, the darkest hallow: this was my needed education. We have been married now 2 and half years...and here I am still learning how not to resist him when he dares to pick the mess of me up and hold me in his arms.

To let go and let yourself be loved in the midst of stomaching a present and vulnerable brokenness, is extremely difficult. But God on the cross calls us to this. When we stand painfully undeserving in the presence of so much grace, our most natural reaction is to run. He begs us, though, to stay. As a woman deeply afraid of the scandalous love of God and the reflection of that love in her husband, I also wanted to run. But He and he has taught me to remain.

The hardest part of marriage, at first, was allowing myself to experience God’s love through my spouse. This, though, is now what I find to be the absolute best part of marriage. It is bewildering and magnifiscent to be someone’s wife and to experience daily the truth that we can never be perfect, but we can, in fact, be loved. This is the profound gift of matrimony and christianity: to arrive at the holy place of surrendering all to be rescued by someone who sees my flaws and wants me anyways....this is what I am learning it means to be both a child of God, and a wife.

My life today, two and half years into marriage is incredibly blessed. In February of 2010, my husband and I both gave our life to Christ.  Two Septembers ago my husband officially adopted my son Lucca, so he is now truly ours. This past September we learned we are pregnant with a baby girl, due January, 2012.  In one another my husband and I found amazing grace from God, and the story of His redemption in our lives continues to unfold...

My one piece of advice for you who are falling in love and dream of marriage is this... Seek, know, and let the gift of God’s love be real to you now. Stop trying to fix yourself into the perfect person and stop trying to hide your flaws. Accept that broken and lovable are two traits that are intimately yours as a human being. Jesus does not see them as mutually exclusive and neither should you.  Love your man in the fullness of his imperfection and let him love you in yours. All of it is made perfect at the foot of the cross.  Remember: No matter what your past history, all things can be made good, for those that love the Lord.

Morgan

Morgan Day Cecil and her growing family live in Portland, Oregon. She is a monthly contributor to Transformed Magazine, an online Christian’s women’s magazine. Right now some of her favorite things are ice-cream dates with her son and eating breakfast burritos with her husband. She is currently writing her first book, a guide for single moms on how to create a beautiful life. You can connect with her via Twitter and Facebook or (her new favorite) Pinterest.

Today I’d like to introduce you to my friend, Joy Eggerichs. I met her many months ago in a little coffee shop on the eastside. Over oatmeal and scrambled eggs and way too many cups of coffee, Joy and her mother (Sarah) and me and my daughter (Elizabeth) enjoyed one of those rare moments of recognized alikeness. Something just clicked in that cozy corner of Portland and a friendship was born. Maybe it was Joy’s uninhibited laughter, along with her mom’s ladylike gestures and startling normalness. We talked about all the things women always talk about: boys and men and why we’re so proud of them and how they worry and perplex us.

And so today, I’ve asked Joy to tell her story. Its not finished yet— no “and they lived happily after” tagged on at the end. Instead you’ll hear a story just starting. A story of a woman who has decided to do her life well. And I think you’ll agree with me that Joy’s story is unfolding just the way the Father wants it… all mixed up with Joy’s quirky sense of humor (unicorns?) and solid rock faith in the rightness of God.

And since I know you’re going to love this, click on over to her fabulous blog to learn and laugh and see why I like her so much.

From my heart,

Diane

My Love Story: Waiting with a Purpose

Spoiler alert: this love story doesn’t end like the movies! Roger Ebert has vowed never to watch it again.

On that note...

I almost got married. I had said yes. My love story was written—or so it seemed.

When the final chapter of “us” came far more quickly than I had imagined, I went to a place of waiting and have remained ever since.

One might immediately think that I have been waiting for a husband this whole time. Sadly, that is not the case. After “we” ended, I couldn’t fathom becoming an “us” with anyone else. The idea repulsed me. And I knew it could never be the “we” of before.

My waiting is on the transformation of my heart.

Sometimes that kind of transformation feels like your heart is a ball of dough and God is a very large Italian man kneading your heart on a woodblock and throwing it up in the air. All the while, you fear that when the heart is perfectly prepared, baked, and ready, some man is going to come along and bite off that valve that allows you to breathe.

Transformation of the heart was scary because I had given my heart away and made a deep emotional commitment. I knew I had some work to do. I realized what “felt” like love was actually an unhealthy type of love. I couldn’t put into words the different styles of love I had experienced until I read C.S. Lewis’s Till We Have Faces. Before reading that, all I knew of the love from before was that it wasn’t right.

And I knew I wanted a different kind of love moving forward.

But even though I can look back and see the transformation God has done, feelings are strong and fear can creep in and say, “Joy, you will never know real, healthy love because of all the attachments you made to unhealthy love.”

This is when I have to stop and cling to truth. And remember I believe in a God who transforms and redeems.

But I want to know answers today! I don’t want to wait anymore! (Insert the stamping and pouting skills of Veruca Salt from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.) At the core of my temper tantrums, the true question of my heart is this:

Lord, will I be loved and able to love well?

Yes. Have patience. There is a purpose.

When I choose to listen and have patience, trusting in a bigger purpose, I find my view of waiting changes. It seems to me that an awareness of purpose constitutes some level of belief. And, as my belief grows, I realize waiting has more to do with my heart toward God than my heart toward a man.

Joy, do you really believe in my purpose for you?

Uhhh, I’m trying!

If I do, then my earthly love story is secondary to the perfect love from my heavenly father. And if I am in relationship with Him, the Lord, then I can have patience knowing that if an earthly love story happens (and I am believing it will), my healthy relationship with God will be the thing that transforms my ability to receive and give healthy love to a man.

Pain of a broken engagement caused me to question my relationship with this “Good God”—His timing, His love, and His purpose for me.

But Scripture talks about suffering. It gives me a heads-up that this will happen because of the brokenness that is in our world. So my desire is that my suffering or questions will not become an idol or obsession that keeps me from waiting well.

Because I know this type of waiting that I have described will be part of married life, too.

While the seasons of my life will change, the character of God will not. And, as I said before, I believe in a God who wants to transform and redeem. A God who will transform and redeem, when I ask. In sorrow, in joy, in wonder, and in wait, He is at work on our stories of love.

Waiting with a purpose,

Joy

“Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” –Romans 5

“The Lord redeems the life of his servants; none of those who take refuge in him will be condemned.” –Psalm 34

“Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.” –Jesus

“Do you believe that I am able to do this?” –Jesus

P.S. I wanted to throw something out to all the readers who might want to participate in my earthly love story. Just in case you know any men who may fit the bill, this is my very serious deal-breaker list. If he doesn’t fit these requirements then you can forget setting us up.

To hear more of my story click here.

PRINT AND KEEP WITH YOU AT ALL TIMES.

- Believer in unicorns

- Beard

- Slightly dirty looking (you know, the “I shower once a week” look)

- Taller than I am

- Passionate about something (God is a given)

- The ability to give me piggyback rides

- Willing to promise daily foot rubs in our wedding vows

- Orphan (so we can spend every Christmas in the Michigan snow with my parents)

Those are just a few things to get you started on your hunt for my new “us” or “we.”

Thanks!

RUTH SCHROEDEL COMER

May 10, 1925 - November 14, 2011

(Mom C, Phil and Matt)

Yesterday Phil’s mom died and for a long while we will grieve.

Her passing was not unexpected, in fact, we’d prayed for the Father to mercifully take her before the pain got too great.  Yet still, the searing agony of losing someone who loved each of us so well is staggering.

We are sad and we should be sad. No amount of convincing platitudes erases the fact that she’s gone from our lives. Even the Library of Congress sized mental files of love-filled memories won’t lessen this very real loss.

We wanted her to live forever… and we know she does… but we want her here.

And so today we travel back to relish the woman we’ve lost: Mom, Grammy, Ruth, Mom C. My family pauses to remember, I pause to remember…

I first met the woman I came to call Mom C when I was the painfully shy girlfriend of her middle son. The day Phil took me home to meet his mom, I wore an off-white ensemble that made me feel as confident as I possibly could while meeting this one whose son revered her. We picked up Chinese food on the way, which promptly leaked brown greasy sauce all over my pants. I was mortified!

Ruth never even noticed.

Instead, she saw me for who I was: the woman her son loved. And on that basis alone, she took me into her heart and let me be myself.

For our wedding, Ruth did the flowers, gifting me with a fairy-tale like setting in which to pledge my heart to her son. When I walked into that warehouse turned wedding chapel, the beauty of her craftsmanship took my breath away! A “few roses” had become a bower of unbelievable artistry… just the first of many loving gifts to start our story together.

Over the years Ruth became my friend. I could say anything to her without fear of censure or disapproval. I trusted her to believe the best about me, even when she knew the worst. Her advice always made so much sense, even when she mixed it up with old wives tales and mid-west traditions.

I remember ignoring her advice when it came to my firstborn son and schedules. The “new research” favored demand feeding and let-the-baby-decide sleep arrangements. My mother teamed up with my mother-in-law to let me know they thought all I’d get for all that “new research” would be an appallingly demanding baby. They were right! It took months to undo the damage done with all that permissive nonsense… yet neither mother once gave me that I-told-you-so pursing of the lips. My mom and Mom C just loved me and laughed when I complained.

The boys (Jack, Phil, and Mark, along with husband, Bill) were her world. She loved them by feeding them delicious meat-laden meals and by baking cakes and pies and the best coffee cake I’ve ever tasted. She’d iron shirts on demand, made their beds way too late in their lives (!), and let their rock band practice in the family room. There she’d be, beaming at their music, opening the windows so her neighbors could hear, whipping up a batch of fudge to “give them energy”.

(Phil on the drums with his band)

How does a young bride compete with that?

Early on, I just jumped in and joined the worshipers-of-mom… and copied every recipe I could. She made it so easy to love her because she loved me regardless of the glaring evidence that I’d never possibly reach her level of revered womanhood. She’d just laugh her little chuckle as if to say, “Oh well, it doesn’t really matter much, does it?”

Mom C never had any daughters of her own; neither did she have a sister. So when the granddaughters came along, her innermost girliness came alive! She bought them frilly dresses and shiny shoes, and a pink satin penoir set that made little Elizabeth feel like a princess. She delighted in Rebekah’s thick thatch of curly dark hair, buying ribbons and trying everything to keep her not-so-girly granddaughter from pulling them out. My girls followed her around the house in their aprons, begging to “help” cook, making a mess and loving every minute of it.

Once when we came for a visit to their retirement home, she called me a week after we’d left to let me know that she’d finally washed Matt’s fingerprints off the mirrored door… she’d just loved seeing those little hands in her home.

(Mom C and John Mark)

Do you see why I loved her?

I know you’d find it hard to believe that a woman like this came from a terribly dysfunctional home. An alcoholic father who’d disappear for months at a time, a mother who got too sick to take care of her, spinster aunts who took over for a while… she never knew a safe, solid home life. Yet she would have scoffed at the idea of using her broken family as an excuse to be demanding or manipulative or even sad. Instead, she determined to build a family that would thrive on the love she dished out with all those homemade meals.

And she loved her “boys” (every one of them over 6 feet tall, and Ruth reaching barely over 5 feet!) no matter what. When they made mistakes, she just loved them. When they made life style choices that worried her, she just loved them. When they became successful, she loved them. And when they suffered she loved them still. It was her way, to love those boy-men no matter what.

Just a few friends and a smattering of family will be at Ruth’s graveside Monday morning. Yet the impact of her love lives on in uncountable lives. She changed a family by her love and then her family changed their families and now a new generation of families is growing up to change their own families… and isn’t that the way a whole world gets changed?

By one woman who chose to love… no matter what?

I miss you, Mom C

From my heart,

Diane

LOVE STORIES will resume on Tuesday this week with another story. Check back then!

When I was asked to share my love story with all of you, I had to chuckle, because ours is not a typical one.

I'd always asked God for a crazy story with my husband, one that could not be explained any other way except that it was orchestrated by God. Well, that's just what we got. Thank you Lord!

I met Nick on January 22nd, 2008. He was a fairly new member of the Christian rock band Kutless, and had recently been frequenting Portland for band rehearsals and studio time. I had been friends with Dave, their bass player, and his wife Megan for a few years and that night they decided to invite me over. There were a few people in addition to the four of us, and throughout that night my attraction for Nick started to develop. He was tall, blonde and handsome (my rendition of the cliche phrase), and absolutely hilarious.

This draw to him mattered very little, as I found out later that Nick was already taken by a girl in California, and had been for over 4 years. His visit went on and we had evening after evening of group activities. Something was different with this guy. We connected like I hadn't with anyone before, but there was that road block- a girlfriend back home. I allowed myself to be attracted to someone who wasn't available.  Towards the end of his visit however, I found out that Nick had been praying about his relationship and was days away from breaking things off.

I patiently waited for things to take place, and slowly but surely I was being pursued by this handsome man from California. We dated for about 2 1/2 months, with a couple visits from sunny California to rainy Portland, OR. April came around and things just didn't feel right. We took a day to pray, and ended up deciding that this just wasn't working. There was no particular reason, it just didn't feel "right."

Over the course of the next year and a half Nick and I stayed friends, with an occasional text or email, but that was about it. At least on my end. In October of 2009 I received an email from him saying that he had been thinking about me and he couldn't shake the thought of me. He so sweetly asked if it would be ok if we got to know each other again, even if it was just as friends. Basically, he'd take what he could get. I definitely took the email with flattery, but immediately got weirded out and anxious about the whole thing, which could only lead to one thing, avoidance. Poor guy. I never really revisited the idea, and even avoided coffee dates with him that next week when he was in town.

After some hurt feelings (I'm such a jerk), life went on, and thoughts of each other lingered off and on, but no real feelings on my end were surfacing. Until March 2010. I had recently been getting involved with Solid Rock's high school youth group, and was on a Spring Break retreat in Sunriver. One of the leaders, Jake Fisher, pulled me aside one day and said he had a song for me to listen to. It was Nick's new song that he'd posted on his website as a free download. It was called, "Love Can Change Your Mind." Admittedly, I had stuffed Nick way into the back of my mind, and hadn't allowed myself to think about him for a LONG time. I sat listening and wondered, "this couldn't possibly be about me, could it?" This song about some ghost of the past that was haunting him. A chorus that said "why can't you just believe? You know we're just wasting time! You can say that everything we had was blind, but love can change your mind." Then the bridge line played and it hit me... it was indeed about me. He sang... "From sunny California, headed north to Portland grey, said 'I'll be waitin' for ya,' but there's nothin' left to say."

He was waiting for me? He still cared about me? Wow. I had a lot to think about.

I went to dinner with my best friend and roommate Chloe later that week, and we spent most of the time analyzing what all of this meant. I didn't think I liked Nick anymore. I thought that was a memory of the past, but then she asked me a question that ended up changing my mind and opening the door again. "So ... why not Nick?" I actually had no clue. Not a single answer to that question. There was no reason why Nick wasn't the guy.

And so the story began. I wrote an email, he wrote back, I wrote back, calls were made, and finally we were dating again.

We spent 10 months dating between Portland and Nashville. This included around 24 roundtrips, and an approximate total of $8,000 spent on airfare.

After all of the travel, and many days spent apart, we were so blessed to be engaged on February 22nd, 2011, married on June 10th, and moved to Nashville, TN on June 23rd. Life is sweet!

Getting to know each other in marriage has by far been my favorite season of our relationship. It is not a cake walk. It has not been easy moving across the country, away from my family, but goodness gracious it has been WONDERFUL.

I married a man who waited for me, who pursued me, and continues to pursue me as his wife. Nick is a godly man who's learning every day what it means to lead me and lay down his life, and he's doing a great job. I have never met such a hard working man. He has been so gracious as he's learned my flaws. I'm pretty sure he's learned a new flaw of mine everyday, and with every single thing learned, he covers me.

For those of you waiting for Mr. Right, please don't settle for anything less than this. These godly husbands DO exist, and they are worth every day spent single. I pinch myself sometimes as I look over at Nick and wonder how I became so blessed. My only answer for that question is God. That's what I asked for from the beginning.

Thank you God for writing my love story.

Thank you for reading.

Allison

If you get a chance, take a listen to the love song that Nick wrote for me that got me hooked for good!

LOVE CAN CHANGE YOUR MIND

The clear blue California sky mocked me as I fumbled to close the doctor’s office door behind me. How could the sun shine cheerfully on such a day as this? How dare the people bustling past me smile and laugh? How cruel a joke that life goes on—for mine stopped with the doctor’s one word: deafness.

“Young lady, you are going deaf.”

Deaf… deaf…deaf…

He was wrong… had to be wrong! A 26 year-old mother does not go deaf. That is for wrinkled old men, not a vibrant young woman with a family and a future.

I hadn’t wanted to go to the doctor in the first place. There was nothing wrong with my ears. The problem was, people mumbled so much. Telephones weren’t as clear as they used to be. And with the noise level in a house with a preschooler and a toddler and a new baby… well, who could hear above all that?

I had almost talked myself out of going but forged ahead to please my husband and family who had been urging me to see a specialist for some time. Confident that the doctor would just give me a pill and make this all go away, I left my newborn nursing baby at home with her dad and kept my appointment. Several hours and countless tests later I drove numbly home, the doctor’s grim diagnosis ringing in my failing ears.

“Diane, you have a severe hearing loss in both ears. We’ll do some tests, but my guess is that it is a neural sensorial hearing loss, probably progressive. It will get worse. You need hearing aids now… deaf later.”

I was stunned. It had never entered my mind that I might be going deaf. Fluid in the ears maybe, perhaps a virus. I had had a mild case of pneumonia a few months before and thought a simple medication would clear up the subtle muffling. But deafness? I was utterly unprepared and absolutely terrified.

I went home, told my husband and family, held my children, and wept. Looking at them, knowing I would not be able to hear them as they grew up, I was engulfed in grief. How can a mother not hear?

Too soon, I dried my tears, stuffed the bewilderment deep down inside and plastered a smile on my face. The doctor had to be wrong.

Life was good. God had blessed me. Everything would be just fine.

And it was. My life was good. It always had been. I’d grown up in a wonderfully loving family, married the man of my dreams—a pastor, a spiritual giant. I had three healthy, happy children and countless friends in a great church. Yes, life was good and God was blessing me. After all, I followed the rules didn’t I? Wasn’t that the way life was supposed to work? I do my part by being very, very good and disciplined and as perfect-as-possible. Then God would do His part. All those promises about His blessing me and taking care of me. It was a done deal. Deafness was most certainly not a part of the package.

Yet despite all that goodness in my life, a nagging emptiness had started me longing for something more. I couldn’t put my finger on it, couldn’t articulate what was amiss, but all that goodness just didn’t seem to be enough. I had everything I’d ever dreamed of having, was doing exactly what I wanted to be doing, yet faced each day with a sort of empty dread.

Try as I might, I couldn’t feel anything but weary from the work of it all.

Ever since I had given my life to Christ as a young teenager, I had tried to emulate certain wise and godly women. If I could just copy their lives, I thought, then someday I’d be a super Christian too. One of these women was Muriel Cook. She was beautiful in every way. Meeting with me every week for a year, she dished out wisdom on a silver platter. With her Bible open, she’d mix the Scriptures with real life while I scrambled to write it all down.

One afternoon she came to our meeting with tears streaking down her carefully made-up face. She had been weeping over her own sinfulness. I was shocked into silence. This woman seemed to me the epitome of perfection. If she was such a sinner, what did that say of me?

Another women stood next to me in the choir. She was a simple woman, not attractive by any means. Her grey streaked hair pulled back in a ponytail did nothing to soften the deep lines on her face. Yet whenever we sang a song about the Cross, or the Savior, or of His washing of our sins, her face transformed into a glowing beauty, the crevices flowing with streams of grateful tears.

Why? What was it that moved her heart while mine was left cold? I had always known that Jesus had died for me. Yet His death did not tear at my heart. Why could I not weep at the Cross?

I began, tentatively at first, to pray about this emptiness. I wasn’t exactly sure what I was praying for. I just knew that I wanted what these women had. I wanted to know God like that, to experience Him intimately. Over time my longing intensified. Whatever it was, whatever it took, I wanted it.

As the months passed after my initial diagnosis, the dullness of my hearing became more and more evident. Each time it reared its ugly head I pushed it down, plastered my smile in place and went on. Tests were ordered. MRI’s, CAT scans, blood tests, bone tests. I switched doctors. I tried harder. Yet all the facts led to one inevitable, inescapable conclusion. I was losing my hearing… and fast.

It is difficult to describe what it is like to lose one’s hearing.

At first it was the little things. I couldn’t hear the kitchen telephone ringing from down the hall and when I finally heard it, I couldn’t tell who was on the other line. All voices sounded about the same to me. I could not tell the difference between Lynn and Kim and the gym. Once I carried on a full fifteen minutes with Stacey only to discover I was talking to Lucy!

Being hearing impaired involves an enormous amount of frustration. I can hear, I just cannot always understand what I hear. It is frustrating to want to talk to someone, to want to get to know someone, but be afraid to enter into a conversation that I will not understand. Sometimes I work so hard to wring out every intelligible bit of sound from the roar that meets my ears that I go home completely wrung out from the effort.

It is frustrating to have a well-meaning person say, “But you do so well, nobody would ever know!” What they don’t realize is how much I miss, how often I bluff, how tense I get in a conversation when I hope I am nodding my head the right way. Or how stupid I feel when I see that dread look in their eyes that means I have just blundered badly.

But it was at home that the pain was the greatest.

When my baby cried in the night and I didn’t hear.

When my little girl wrapped her dimpled arms around my neck and whispered sweet secrets—that I couldn’t hear.

Or when my son told me all about his first stay away at camp, chattering excitedly on our way home about nicknames and new friends and fun games… and I knew I was missing all the but the main parts.

Oh the pain! I didn’t mind as much not hearing birds or crickets or alarm clocks or buzzers. Let the cookies burn in the oven for all I care! But those lovely, intimate, important words—I wanted to hear. I longed to hear. The thought of being cut off, isolated and alone in my silent world terrified me.

I began to sink into a deep depression. I had never experienced such sadness before. Me, the middle child, steady-eddie, never too high, never very low, just cheer up and everything will be fine. But not now. This was darkness. I couldn’t just cheer up. I was overwhelmed with fear, with anger, and most of all with self-pity. My God had turned His back on me. How could He? Why would He? I felt unloved, rejected, abandoned. I had absolutely no doubt that He was able to heal me. My faith in His ability never wavered. The fact that He did not heal me despite my desperate pleadings shook my faith in His goodness to its very foundations.

God was supposed to bless me for obeying Him, for following the rules.

Isn’t that how it works? I do the right thing. He does the right thing. I fulfill the condition. He fulfills the promise.

I was a proper pastor’s wife. I sacrificed so much for Him. How dare He do this to me?

My fear turned to anger. Deep within my heart I railed against God. I thought Him unfair, uncaring, cold—even mean.

I prayed and felt silence.

I read my Bible and saw only the Jesus of righteous wrath.

I went to church and wept.

My family reached out in tender love but I rejected every effort. My husband tried to help me in that exuberant way of his, saying all the wrong things as he watched me crumble within myself. At least it isn’t cancer. There isn’t pain. Ah, come on, its not so bad.

Every word grated against soul as I sank ever deeper.

I wrapped myself in a cloak of self-pity and firmly shut everyone out.

For the first time in my charmed life I faced something truly difficult and I failed miserably. My tidy world collapsed. I was reduced to a self-pitying, sniveling mess.

But does the Father ever turn His back on us? Does He ever throw up His mighty hands in disgust?

No! Never!

No sin is so bad, no thought so wicked, no person so vile as to turn Him away. This Savior who hung on the Cross for us did it not while we were flawlessly following the rules. He suffered there while we were sinners. Seeing the black bottom of our hearts He pursues us, relentlessly loving us with a love that will never let us go.

On a blustery Sunday evening in February, I reluctantly asked the elders of my church to pray for me. I was embarrassed by my need. Ashamed to say that God had not answered my pleadings for healing. Would He listen better to theirs? These men were friends, colleagues of my husband. Could I admit my simmering rage? Would they see the blackness that plagued my soul?

In a chilly room with cinderblock walls and windows obscured by ambered glass, I sat on a plastic chair surrounded by these elders. They were a motley assortment of men. One was a retired bank executive, another a construction worker. One man coached the high school wrestling team; another had risen to vice-president of a gas company. Each and every one of them loved God with passion and integrity.

Oh how these men prayed! These dignified, conservative men beseeched the Father on my behalf. They anointed my head with oil and prayed for healing. They laughed and they wept and they praised God together for over an hour as I soaked my blouse with my tears.

And as they prayed, the darkness began to lift. Like a darkened sky on a stormy day when the sun suddenly and unexpectedly breaks through with a stream of brilliant light, so my heart was flooded with light. The coldness of the room and of my soul warmed and filled until I abandoned myself to the beauty of that light. Everything else faded from my mind; the voices of the elders as they prayed, my own embarrassed fidgeting, my intense discomfort at the honesty of the moment—all were forgotten as I was enveloped by the warmth of what I knew was God.

And in that moment I heard His Voice.

“It’s okay, Diane. It’s okay.”

Over and over again like a song soothing my spirit I heard His words as clear as if He was speaking into my ear. “It’s okay”.

I knew exactly what He was saying to me in that suspended moment in time. He wasn’t going to heal me. My ears would fail. Deafness would define my future. And somehow, in some way I could never fathom, He had made it okay. Not just bearable, but really, honestly okay and right.

And suddenly it was! With my heart dancing and face glowing I wiped my tears and fled that room as fast as I could. What had happened in there? Dare I tell anyone? How in the world could I possibly describe what I had just seen and heard? And what did it mean?

Filled with wonder and a fair amount of fear, I went home, tucked my kids into bed and collapsed in exhaustion. The next morning found me wide awake before anyone else stirred. I had to sort this out. Needed to fit it in somewhere to my conservative theology that didn’t welcome supernatural experiences as a legitimate means to truth.

That’s when I heard that Voice again. Just as clear as the night before, but now with a hint of that firm tone I had infrequently heard as a girl with my dad.

“Alright Diane, this is where the rubber meets the road. You’ve listened to the best preachers, been to fabulous seminars, read great books. Will you entrust your deafness to Me?”

And in that early quiet, He turned me to Psalm 40, which has become the song of my heart,

“I waited patiently

and He inclined to me, and heard my cry.

He brought me up out of the pit of destruction, out of the miry clay;

And he set my feet upon a rock making my footsteps firm.

And He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to God;

Many will see and fear,

And will trust in the LORD.”

Psalm 40:1-3

I left that encounter with God a changed woman. For the first time in my life, I had heard from God. Actually heard! His no left me filled with more peace and joy than I had ever experienced in my life.

In those months that followed the doctor’s first mention of the “D-word”, I had struggled with the issue of faith. Well-meaning people exhorted me to “have faith”. God would surely heal me and put my life back to what I wanted it to be if I only had enough faith. I searched the Scriptures to see if it was true and came away seeing that God is a god who heals—sometimes. It took absolutely no stretch of faith for me to believe that God could heal. What shook me to the core was that He didn’t .

Paul asked God to heal him of his ailment three times? Like Paul, I begged, pleaded and demanded healing, but I pleaded hundreds of times. Somehow, it seemed, if I could just drum up enough of this emotion called faith, then God would be obligated to grant me healing.

I had no idea how wrong I was.

God is not a Father who demands pitiful begging. He cherishes His children. In fact, the Bible paints a picture of a Father who longs to heap good gifts on His kids.

Faith, real faith came for me the moment I believed that God is a good God who purposely allowed this affliction to be a part of my reality. His lovingkindness has actually allowed my hearing to fail. Like David, who exclaimed with wonder in his voice, that “It was good for me that I was afflicted.” (Psalm 119:71), I began to see this as His premium plan for my life—really. This is His plan for my joy. Faith began to grow when, confronted by His holiness, I fell on my face and surrendered my deepest dread to Him.

My own faith failed the test—completely. I fell flat on my spiritual face. The truth is that He picked me up out of the pit of destruction I was digging myself into, cleaned all the mud and muck off my heart, and placed me firmly back where I belonged—on the solid rock of His faithfulness.

And then, wonder of wonders, He put a new song in my mouth. This song is all about Him. My own goodness is not enough to weather the storms and turbulence of real life, but His is! And I will sing and speak and write about His faithfulness everyday for the rest of my life.

Now, more than two decades later, I am completely deaf. Only the faintest rumble of sound penetrates the wall of silence. Relationships are hard; social gatherings painful.

This journey towards deafness has been long and difficult. Isolation, loneliness, separation, and misunderstanding have been my constant companions.

It hurts not to hear.

Yet the Father continually heaps great spoonfuls of grace on my heart. He speaks and I listen as never before. His comfort is palatable. His peace beyond figuring out. I would not trade this precious intimacy He has offered me for the best hearing in the world. God is good, though the path to His heart is oft-times strewn with pain.

Everyday as I struggle and strain to hear through my deafness, I learn a little bit more about listening to Him.

In my silent world God speaks.

I hear Him now. His voice is beautiful, rich, powerful and kind.

His words convict me in a way that makes me feel clean again and sometimes His words bring me to my knees.

His words fill me with joy and hope, for I know that…

He speaks in the silence.

From my heart,

Diane

Click here to read the post about these recipes: Thanksgiving Turkey:

Brine

16 quarts water

1 ½ c kosher salt

1 ½ c pure maple syrup

4 T black peppercorns

16 garlic cloves, crushed

2 lemons, thinly sliced

Spice rub

4 T minced fresh thyme

2 T dried rubbed sage

2 T poultry seasoning

1 t black pepper

8 garlic cloves, chopped

4 onions, quartered (I use red onions mostly because they turn a burgundy color)

Cola Syrup

2 C cola (not sugar free! I use the stuff from Trader Joe’s, as it’s not so full of unpronounceable additives)

1 C pure maple syrup

Boil cola and syrup in a small saucepan for one minute or so until it thickens up a bit.

1. To prepare the brine, combine all ingredients in a large stockpot, stirring until the salt dissolves.

2. To prepare the turkey, remove giblets and neck from the turkey. Rinse turkey with cold water; pat dry, trim excess fat.

3. To brine the turkey, I place it in a plastic garbage sack, which I then put in a large ice chest. Then I carefully pour the brine over the turkey until it is well covered. Tie it up tight and the leakage is minimal. Surround the bag with ice and close it up.

If you have a large enough pot, it would be easier to put the whole thing in the fridge to brine. But who has a pot big enough for a 24-pound turkey?

Allow at least 24 hours for the turkey to soak in the brine.

4. On Thanksgiving morning, remove the turkey from the brine; pat dry. Starting at the neck cavity, loosen the skin from breast and drumsticks by inserting fingers, gently pushing between skin and meat. Rub thyme mixture under loosened skin, sprinkle inside body cavity.

5. At this point, I put some of my sausage stuffing into the cavities of the turkey. The stuffing will be somewhat sweet. Do not over fill the cavity. I put the rest of my stuffing into the crock-pot and add plenty of broth so it doesn’t dry out.

6. Roast the turkey as per directions on the wrapping. After about an hour, start to baste it with the cola/syrup mixture every so often.

7. I love to use the drippings to make gravy with- but its sweet, so I also usually buy good gravy at Trader Joe’s for those who prefer a more traditional gravy on their turkey and mashed potatoes.

Cream Gravy

2 (14 ½ oz) cans fat-free, less-sodium chicken broth

2 C whole milk

4 T cornstarch

1 t salt

½ t black pepper

I usually ½ this recipe since we do not use much gravy for left overs.

Place broiler pan with turkey drippings on top of the stove. (be sure to use a separator to skim the fat off the top or you’ll have a greasy gravy), add broth. Combine milk and cornstarch in a small bowl, stirring well with a whisk; add to pan. Bring to a boil, cook 1 minute or so, stirring constantly.

That’s it! Hope you enjoy it as much as we do.

Maple Apple Crisp:

What You Will Need:

4-5 granny smith apples, pealed and chopped into small chunks

1 tsp lemon juice

¼ cup real maple syrup

2 T cane sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

¾ cup oat flour (whole wheat flour works too)

¾ cup slow cooking oats

¾ cup brown sugar

¼ cup sugar

4-5 T earth balance butter (or real butter)

Mix apples, lemon juice, maple syrup, sugar and cinnamon all together and place in a medium or large baking pan.

Combine flour, oats, brown sugar and sugar and cut in the butter using a pastry knife until butter is all in small chunks and ingredients are combined. If the mixture seems to be too dry… you can always add more butter!

Pour topping over apple mixture and bake at 350 for 45 min. Check it at that point and see if the top is starting to brown, it may need a bit more time.

Enjoy with vanilla ice cream, coconut milk ice cream or pumpkin ice cream!

Other variations:

-       You can use a pie crust (I think the store bought ones are the best!) on the bottom and then follow the same instructions if you want it to be more pie like

-       It is also delicious with real caramel syrup drizzled on top!

-       If you like lots of topping… just add ¼ cup more flour, oats, and sugar and a bit more butter.

Best Bread Ever:

½ C butter

¼ t garlic powder

2 (10 oz.) cans Hungry Jack Refrigerated Flaky Biscuits

½ C chopped green onions

½ C shredded Monterey Jack cheese

Heat oven to 350. Grease bread pan. In small saucepan, melt butter; stir in garlic. Separate dough into 20 biscuits, dip biscuits into butter mixture. Stand biscuits on edge in prepared pan, forming 4 rows crosswise of 5 biscuits each.

In small bowl, combine onions and cheese. Place 1 T cheese mixture between each pair of biscuits. (Do not place cheese on outside of biscuits)

Drizzle with any remaining butter.

Bake at 350 for 35-40 minutes or until deep golden brown and cooked in the middle.

Cool 5 minutes; loose edges; remove from pan. Serve warm or re-warm right before the meal.

Turn off all smoke alarms!

Q: First off I wanted to begin by saying how much I love reading the blog, it has been so encouraging on many different occasions. While reading the new blog I had a few questions come to mind that I have been attempting to work through, so I decided to try to form my thoughts in my head into at least semi clear statements, but I apologize if it is kind of all over the place.

One thing that I have struggled with, while attending multiple weddings without a date, is what does it look to like to desire to have a relationship and live out a love story, and not just any but one that is written by our Father, but to be patient and content while waiting to meet my future husband? Or, if I am desiring to have a relationship, does that mean I actually am not content?

I have had many people tell me how it was in the times when they felt "content" about not being in a relationship that they met their now spouse, so I have thought that in order to be in the right place to meet someone I need to not have a desire to meet someone, but struggle with that when I feel like I'm being left behind as all my friends begin to get married and start their new lives. I think the hardest part for me, is that in wanting a God centered relationship with a person He has set aside for us, there is nothing we can do in the here and now but wait, and so I guess what I am asking is what does it look like to be patient and wait on the Lord for such a big thing as desiring a husband to serve along side and live life with, but in the mean time to be content in where the Lord has you, and can desiring something we do not have and being content in where we are even go hand-in-hand?

I'm sorry my "question" is kind of all over the place and has taken form in many small questions, but thank you for giving girls like me the opportunity to ask questions we have been struggling with and working through, it is truly a blessing.

A: Dear Friend,

I love your question!

I hear your heart to step into the role of counterpart/helper/completer for a man with a vision to follow hard after God. And I sense your “let me at ‘em” impatience to jump in and get to work.

Like you, I relished the idea of pouring my life into a husband and family. Yes, I made plans for a career (thinking I’d be a teacher on the mission field), but my deepest longing was to get behind the vision of someone I could respect.

I just cannot imagine that God is asking you to deny your heart’s longing when it is so beautifully in line with the way He created you. Yet at the same time, He knows that marriage and a husband and family will not satisfy you. The great danger in your desire is that you would expect a man … or children, or your role as wife and mother, to fulfill you. The Father knows that until you find that place of rest and fulfillment and completeness in your relationship with Him, you will be destined to destroy any other people you attempt to put in that place.

That sounds harsh, I know. But for many years I tried to find my fulfillment in my godly husband and beautiful children. And they weren’t nearly enough! Sometimes I would wake up and wonder what was wrong with me. I had everything I’d ever wanted and my heart ached for more… but I didn’t have a clue what more I wanted.

It took some serious failure on my part to realize that my role as wife and mother was my assigned task in the Kingdom, my way of gratefully serving the Master—not my path to fulfillment.

That said, your job at this stage of your life is to pour yourself into knowing God intimately. At the same time, asking Him to help you to know yourself so that you can serve Him according to the way He created you.

And there is something so alluring about a woman whose focus is on knowing God! While a woman who is “out to get” a man seems to give off an aura of desperation, a woman who is out to know and serve the Savior gives off a fragrance of beauty.

When wise women urge you to be content without a man, they do not mean that to desire a husband is wrong. Its just that experiential knowing that no man, no matter how wonderful, will fill that empty place inside.

So my advice to you…

• Pour all that passion into knowing Christ intimately. Establish an intensive and consistent habit of studying the Scriptures in order to store up wisdom for the future.

• Begin to form a picture of who you sense God wanting for you to become. Study women you admire. Surround yourself with seekers of wisdom.

• Practice beauty in every area of your life. Be the kind of woman who leaves every relationship, every job, every person in your life (even the irritating ones) with a whiff of loveliness.

• Craft your speech to be encouraging and uplifting so that someday you’ll be comfortable dishing out those loving words to your husband and family.

• Learn to forgive quickly, to be gracious when your friends and family hurt your feelings, to be easy to live with.

• Learn to work hard and cheerfully when you don’t feel like it. Much of your “career” as a mom will entail tasks you won’t want to engage in. Being present with your children day in and day out takes an enormous amount of determination and discipline. Caring requires a dying to all that SELF that gets in the way of maturity.

Preparing for your dream of being a wife to a godly man of vision is no less important than preparing for any other career. And I haven’t even mentioned the skills you’ll need to accumulate— cooking, managing a home, balancing a budget, caring for clothing (I ruined most of our clothes during the first year of marriage!), all the arts of creating a home that is a welcoming place where your family will thrive.

So, you see, you have work to do right now. Lots of work!

From my heart,

Diane

I’m back from Haiti— safe and sound and forever changed.

I’ve scrubbed the layers of Deet off my skin, sudsed the sweat and smoke from my hair, and disinfected everything touched by the filthy fumes that engulf that ravaged land.

Before I move on and embrace my lists and goals and responsibilities for the next season, I’m longing to share with you some lessons learned in this adventure.

I’ve confessed my life-long battle with fear on these pages. I’ve opened the not-so-noble realities of my heart to you and let you in to catch a glimpse of my wobbly faith.

And you’ve responded by loving me anyway, by cheering me on, by reassuring me that my God is bigger then my fears, able to break me from the chains that have held me captive and limited my freedom.

And so many of you have been embolden to embark on your own quest to slay the dragons that stalk you.

We’re warriors together, brave-hearted weaklings who’ve been recruited by the Strong One to do the impossible.

And so I want to tell you one last story about my own battle to overcome life-limiting fear. It happened on day two of our Haiti trip, in the moments before I walked down the ramp into the plane, which would carry us from the safe and predictable into a decidedly unsafe place. Here’s what I wrote in my journal…

Do not be afraid or discouraged.

For the LORD is with you wherever you go.

Joshua 1:9

As we lined up to board the final flight to Haiti just moments ago, I first felt a welling up of exhilaration.

We’re finally going!

After months of planning and dreaming and making it happen— it is!

Sometimes dreams seem like just that— fantasies from which we’ll eventually awake… but will never come to be.

But then, just as I stepped onto the ramp that would lead to the airplane, the excitement gave way to overwhelming fear. Panic. Like I’d hit an invisible wall that impeded every step. My breath came in gasps, my knees threatened to give way.

Is this what a panic attack feels like? I wondered. We’re going to Haiti! A land so foreign surrounded by a people I neither know nor understand. Out of my safe and knowable world into… well, into a world that is at best unpredictable and at worse, dangerous.

Fear. Palatable and pulsing.

Do I have to?

Just as that sense of dread threatened to drown me, these words appeared in bold typeface, marching across my mind:

SO NOT BE AFRAID!

A choice.

My emotions are real but they don’t rule me. With my will I wrestle all those feelings into submission. Tie them up and settle them down.

I choose courage.

Strangely, my feelings follow quickly. As if that sudden surge was like a feisty toddler testing his mom to see if she really means it. Sort of a “I dare you to contradict me” bluff.

God’s words, given days before I needed them, serve as boundaries to all those unruly feelings.

And so my soul rests. Not quite at ease, but not really fearful either. A sort of peace that is held in place by that “belt of truth” Paul described in Ephesians, chapter 6.

I’ll need to tighten that belt from time to time when I sense myself slipping.

Courage, Di.

I think that like many things, practice makes perfect. I practice courage every time I dare do something I don’t want to do. Every time I poke my head out of my safe turtle shell to do the hard thing.

Like picking up the phone and making that intimidating call.

Like walking across the street to meet my new neighbor.

Like going someplace alone because I need to and ought to even though I don’t want to.

That sort of stuff.

And I get stronger each time I do it. My faith grows. A history develops. I’ve seen God come through, I’ve put my hand in His and He’s seen me through. Again and again.

Courage is not the absence of fear. It’s the choice to lasso that fear into compliance with my will. To go for it regardless of fear. To be strong when I feel weak.

And of course, the only real way for that to work in a fear-prone woman like me is to run into the Shelter of the Almighty and hide there. To rest where I’m really safe. To trust His overwhelming love for me— and to pour a little bit of that love back by being willing to be unsafe for His sake.

Some of you will never understand what I’m saying. You step with confidence into every adventure, fearlessly flinging yourself into the thrill of the unknowable.

But lots of us aren’t like that, and so we march forward resolutely, one step at a time. We don’t fling, we choose.

And since God’s Book is full of heroes who had to do the same, we know that He somehow delights in coming through for people like us. He even leads us to lead.

People like Joshua, Moses, Timothy, David, Esther, Hannah… and countless others who chose to forge forward at great cost to themselves.

Here is Paul’s challenge to a people facing their fears:

“A final word: Be strong with the Lord’s mighty power.

Put on all God’s armor so that you will be able to stand firm against all the strategies and tricks of the Devil. For we do not fight against people made of flesh and blood, but against those mighty powers of darkness

who rule this world, and against wicked spirits in the heavenly realms.

Use every piece of God’s armor to resist the enemy in the time of evil,

so that after the battle you will still be standing firm.”

Ephesians 6:10-13

Those words, scribbled with shaking hand into my journal on that last flight into Haiti, proved prophetic.

For the next seven days I never once felt afraid.

Not when I saw the bloody corpse beside our bus on the drive through Port-O-Prince. Not when I stood in front of almost 200 hundred pastor’s wives and leaders to begin my message, knowing that what I had laboriously prepared would be entirely wrong for this culture of women. Not when our bus driver played chicken with a Mac truck on the highway. Not even when a I saw a giant cockroach scurry across the bathroom in the middle of the night!

My limbs trembled a little bit when I heard Bishop call “Pastor Diane Carole Comer” to the platform to address the church- but I think that had to do more with the sweat dripping down my body and my uncertainty about what I was actually expected to do, than fear.

And I’m not naïve enough to think that the battle to overcome my sin is locked up tight.  But I can never again go back to the coward I once was.

I know His power now. I know that He is a BIG God. I know that obedience leads to life.

And I relish my widened world. There’s room to breath here. Room to learn to dance, to sing at the top of my lungs, to feel the exhilarating beat of joy.

Here in this place of obedience, God put me in the middle of the most courageous women I have ever met. Their faces lined with the grief of deep pain, these women poured their love all over us. They took us in, kissed our cheeks, laughed at my fumbling attempts to sway my hips in that graceful sway of theirs.  They wrote me songs and taught me jumping dance steps… and they showed me what a courageous women looks like.

Beautiful.

They are my sisters and I’ll be back to dance with them again…

May I just encourage each of you to face what terrifies you? Whether it is bugs or bad people, earthquakes or financial uncertainty, the risk of rejection, or the fear of failure… will you step out of the shadows into this place of light and joy?

Will you dance with the women of Haiti?

From a heart full of more love than I can contain,

Pastor Diane Carole Comer (aka, me!)

Dave and I had been hearing about each other for about six months from a mutual friend at our church in San Jose.  Neither of us were eager to be “set up” but finally we could no longer avoid the schemes of our well meaning friend.  She literally grabbed us both during an evening service and stood right by us as we introduced ourselves to each other.  We were both 24, recently graduated from college and working at our first career type jobs.  Dave left for a missions trip to the Philippines (with Phil Comer) and when he got back we started dating.  We had a few false starts and one separation due to Dave’s cold feet but we married almost exactly one year from the date of when we first met.

Our love story is so different from Fallon and Alex and from Anna and Matt.  Dave and I started marriage as very young Christians, full of selfish desires and unrealistic expectations.

Neither of us grew up in homes where we had great models of a strong, vibrant marriage, so we packed our bags full of wrong thinking, worldly ways of dealing with conflict, pride and completely self-centered motives and started our life together.  Our first few years were full of arguments and frustration.

We realized that we had shown each other who we wanted to be while we dated but neither of us truly knew the other one when we got married.  I was very much the woman in the second half of Proverbs 14:1 “The wise woman builds her house, but with her own hands the foolish one tears hers down.” I was so busy trying to manipulate Dave to become who I wanted him to be and trying so hard to change him that he never felt honored or respected by me.  As a result it was difficult for him to really know me and learn to love me.  If we hadn’t believed so strongly in God’s Word and known that God hates divorce, we would have been very tempted to take the easy way out and give up.

So the best part of our love story really begins later down the road as a result of trial and heart break. We finally realized that we had absolutely no tools to work with to build a strong foundation for our marriage. We began to pursue resources like marriage conferences, good books and especially couples with good marriages that we could learn from to begin to learn what it meant to be married the way God meant it to be.

Slowly over time we started to understand how selfish we were and worked hard to make changes.  Not being able to have children at first, was excruciatingly painful for us. We tried for years to get pregnant but were not able to have children.  The Lord led us to adoption and blessed us with Ashley.  God used that experience to shape us and change our focus to HIm.

Later God allowed us to have Jordan and then Rachel who has Down Syndrome.  We walked through cancer with her and now Crohn ‘s Disease and dementia.  Over the years, watching Dave lovingly guide our children and gently care for Rachel, makes me fall in love with him more every day.

God uses those hard times to bring us closer to HIm and closer to each other.

Now I would say our love story is better than it has ever been. We truly are one, I love and respect Dave more than anyone I know and he unselfishly loves me like I had always dreamed of years ago.  I’m so grateful for God’s grace to bring us together in the first place, but even more to keep us together long enough to really find the joy and fulfillment that is possible in marriage.  If we had given up and not persevered we would have missed the best part of our lives and the amazing joy that we now have in our family and in serving Him together.

Vickie

It was a rough afternoon for the missionaries. We spent it on a pristine beach about an hour from Port-au-Prince—snorkeling, swimming, and jumping off the pier. We left much rested after such an intense, life-changing week. Church started at six today—6 a.m. And it went for more than four hours. We had the unique privilege of going to church Haitian style. We thought Pastor Alex was going to speak, but they ran out of time for his message. Pastor Diane Carol Comer, however, brought a short (and unexpected) message from Solid Rock. She left the Haitians with Joshua 1:9 - “Have I not commanded you?  Be strong and courageous.  Do not be terrified, do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.“

(Bishop Jeune)

(Diane with Madam Jeune interpreting)

(Amanda Jones)

Kathleen Joffer has blessed our team this week by leading morning devotions. The Haitians told us story after story of God speaking to them through visions and dreams.  Kathleen challenged us to not put God in an American box and be open to all the ways He speaks – even in the silence of our dreams.  Zebby Wheelock has blessed us with her fervent prayers, both for us and the women at the Widow’s Home.

We’ve spent days enjoying the beauty of the Haitian people, and today we enjoyed the beauty of the Haitian countryside as well. Ocean Breeze Beach was beautiful as was our trip through the mountain countryside.  Wild goats, donkeys, and cows roamed the rugged farmland dotted with plantain trees.  We drove through small ocean towns and got stuck in downtown Port-au-Prince’s heavy evening traffic.

It was truly an adventure!

There’s no water tonight for showers. We are hot, sweaty, and will probably stink tomorrow when some of you pick us up from the airport, but we’ve had the time of our life.

A huge thank you to Elizabeth Mosser for posting the blog so late for us every night. Thank you to the many of you who have prayed fervently for us at home and for all your notes that spurred us on. We can’t wait to see many of you tomorrow night.

Many of you have already been to Haiti, but if you haven’t, we hope you have the opportunity to come soon.

Thank you for helping us bring His Name to Haiti.

Ore voi’ –

Madam Curt and Madam Jon  (Jodi and Melanie)

*The Love Stories series will resume tomorrow morning so check back then!