The Challenge We Accept
I’ve said this before, and if you talk to me, follow me on Instagram, or read my blog…you will hear it again, “Marriage is not for the faint of heart.”
Nay, marriage is a hard hard hard battle for the brave. It’s a constant battle of the wills, toughening of the soul, and reminder that, darn it, we just aren’t quite Home yet, and we are (I am) in desperate need of One I can call my Savior.
This week was one of those I’m on my knees, Lord kind of weeks.
One of those weeks where I looked at my wounded soldier, my husband, the one I had wounded with my own words, and say we must remember that we are the not enemies. The Enemy is our Enemy.
The one I have stood facing, promising forever and promising faithfulness and camaraderie has been a victim of my poisonous, exhausted, stabbing tongue.
Yes friends…we too (the pastors, the Kims) have those weeks.
And when I finally had time to rest from the battle (the battle with, not against, my spouse), and bring the conflict in my heart out to the Light, this scary-good prayer came like breath: Grow me as a wife. All the areas I need to grow in to become the wife you designed me to be, grow me, God. I accept the challenge.
You see, there are many times where I’ve tried to fit a picture I’ve seen of what a wife should look like…Tammy Taylor is my perfect picture of a wife (you can laugh, but if you’ve seen FNL, don’t lie about your admiration. I will call you out so fast). If only I were like Tammy where I could express my frustration with that cute little Southern charm and a whip of that killer hair, and still make that bbq happen with a big grin on my face…If only I could be more like Tammy Taylor.
But Will didn’t marry Tammy…and Tammy is fictional. Will married me, and there are pieces of me that he needs. And there may even be broken pieces of mine that he (my Will) needs to see healed, because that’s how I will become more of the wife God designed me to be.
Because, in beautiful honesty, my brokenness is what sets me a part. And my brokenness is a unique gift I bring into my marriage, if I allow God’s healing hand to do his work in it.
And the scary-good prayer of accepting the challenge to grow, this is a challenge towards commitment, honoring my husband above myself, and trusting in God to grow my husband into the man HE’s designed him to be…not the mold of a man I plan to shove him into.
This is the challenge I’ve accepted: I want to become more of the wife God intended me, no one else, to be. I want to grow grow grow and cultivate a home of healing for my husband and our big kid and our baby. I want to walk in the knowledge that I am a woman, a wife, restored in so many ways, because my God is the God who makes the withered hand straight and the little girl arise.
My God is the God who presents challenges that are worthy of walking through with heads held high and arms outstretched.
His work will never be completed on this side of heaven, but my prayer is that in 50 years I can look to my left and see my husband’s big ol’ (toothless) smile, knowing that, through all the shattered glass, we are trying our hardest and working our tails off to be Christ to each other.
Here’s to forever growing, my one sweet Will.