Sometime around ten o’clock, Papa Bear walked through the front door. It was too early for lunch, but he does pop in from time-to-time throughout the work day (which has made the move 100% worth it!). I looked up and gave him a half smile, because that seemed to be all I could muster. He didn’t return the favor.

“You didn’t get my text, did you?”

I hadn’t. But it seems the world keeps turning, even when I try to tune it out. And my father-in-law had died.

I ran to my husband, and I wrapped my arms around him as he began to cry. I told him I was sorry, and then I offered chamomile tea. Like my dormant Texas accent that comes out of hiding when I’m angry or especially tired, both grieving and comforting return me to my roots. So, I moved in to the kitchen. Fried eggs, fried wontons, chicken fried steak…you should see a pattern forming here.

The service has been delayed for six weeks, which will give us enough time to plan. We’re finally taking the kids to California (San Francisco), just not under the circumstances we’d hoped to. And to the Grand Canyon, too, it seems. We have ashes to scatter there.

There’s so much more to say, but I just don’t have the heart for it at the moment. I’ll be back soon. If you need me before then, I’ll be in the kitchen.

Anyway.

While Papa Bear and I were out at a pool hall, just having fun for no other purpose at all (ahem), Papa Bear commented on how we had matched our outfits on accident. I was wearing a cute striped t-shirt (green and cream) that I’d borrowed from my sister-in-law’s closet. He was wearing a chocolate brown shirt that he’s had for the past four years. Our shirts did look cute together. But they did not match, at all.

“How do we match?” I asked.

“Cause we’re both wearing green shirts.” He paused….and then he continued, “Aren’t we?!”

That’s just another way that he needs me.

But don’t even get me started about all the ways that I need him!

Once we did arrive at the end of our little hallway, I quietly rolled over with my pillow under my arm. I always have things to talk about in bed as my brain refuses to shut down right away. Papa Bear, however, can go from talking to snoring in three seconds flat. No, I’m not exaggerating. And when I jostle him out of his newfound sleep, it’s pretty much the same as waking him in the middle of the night. So, over the years, I’ve gotten better and better about not having the last word in bed.

Last night, though, I was almost asleep when a chipper voice startled my eyes open. “I think I’m ready to get a tattoo,” he said.

It seems I married a sapling….a new believer who was cut down, right and left, by anything that sought to destroy. Years one through three it was the big things, but there were little things as well.

I read somewhere awhile back that “women marry men hoping they will change….and men marry women hoping they won’t”. I think of that almost every time I look in the mirror….and I heave a heavy sigh.

When Papa Bear and I decided to rebuild our marriage….starting with ashes, a Bible and a broom, I knew, in theory, that the journey would be long. Still, I wasn’t prepared for what seemed like an abundance of failures and setbacks along the way. “I found porn, again!” or “I caught him in another lie!!” I moaned to God, wondering how long this pain was going to continue. That is, until one day I was emoting to a friend and she quoted something she’d first heard from her grandmother. “People grow like trees,” she said. “You can’t watch it happen; you look back on it and say, ‘Wow.’ But, to see anything at all, you have to look year by year and stop looking day by day.”

It’s been over four years now since I’ve started viewing my husband as a tree. Today, when I got in the car, I turned the key and immediately heard praise music blaring through the speakers….and all I could say was, “Wow.” Even though he’s had a heart for worship for awhile now, gratefulness spawned a flashback to the years of pleading and praying I took silently to my Savior….asking Him to give my husband a passionate hunger for the things of Heaven.

When he teaches our children about God….”Wow.”

When I look at him and see that….

He’s sorry.

He’s faithful.

He picks me flowers.

He preaches the gospel.

He mentors.

He prays.

He feels.

And when I see that he has somehow become the sane one in this relationship….

“Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow!”

I am floored by the well-watered growth rings Papa Bear has gained in the past four years. He’s not a perfect man. Good thing; I am not a perfect woman. As a woman who has longed for growth and change, though, it is easy for me to get caught up in wanting more (more, more, more, more, more, more) instead of reveling in how far he’s come (how far we’ve come). But his current failures are only evidence of his continued need for a Savior. The rings reveal who he is; and you don’t count rings every day.

The man I married seven years ago is a tree, and so I know he will bear good fruit….when that fruit is in season. And he’ll continue to prosper and grow, but not necessarily in the direction I might point him. After all, he’s a tree, and trees must grow toward the Son.

Does anyone else have an other half whose filing system looks a little like this?

In fifty years, will I look back on this latest trial, especially these last few weeks, and laugh? I doubt it. The fact that you already do proves how incredibly mature you are. I’m thankful, though, for this fire. Only forty-eight hours ago, I thought I’d be burned alive. Now I’m standing on ashes so cold it is hard to imagine the heat was ever there. You laughed and said, “I told you so,” and your words, the very thing I need and have craved from you for four years, seemed to instantly transform to gold. Did you ever know, or dare to hope, that your words could be golden? Open your mouth, my love, it has been fashioned for truth and life.

If I could shout my love for you from the mountaintops, and have the whole world hear it, I would do that for you. My fear, the one of being loved less than I am loving, has finally been crushed. We can run away together and still stay right here, God is big enough to do that for us. Let the whole world forsake you, I will defend you. If I am ever again your wrongful accuser, may God quickly shut my mouth.

If it were not for the lions mouths, speaking lies and destruction into our home, I might never have known how much you love me. What Satan intended to be the final nail in our coffin, God has used to crush the coffin! Once again, He has brought forth life from the grave and has replaced fear with peace and trust. But if it were not for the digging, how would I have ever known that I have one of the most faithful husbands in town!?

As we near our seven year anniversary, I am overwhelmed with joy. We’ve been married happily, faithfully and peacefully for a full year longer than we were not. And every year, every day, every hour, every second, the past is pushed further and further behind us. It remains only to remind us of God’s redemption; to Him, to me, you are as clean as that first day you met Jesus. A newborn babe would envy the purity you’ve found through confession of your weakness before a willing Savior. You are a success, my love, and your story is one of victory.

I love you unshakably, and I’ll proclaim it fearlessly.  May I grow as much in the next four years as you have grown in the last.

Our pastor spoke about how we all have something to overcome because we once, most likely, viewed God as a big and omnipresent version of our dads. Tiny Dancer wasn’t in the service, so I found it very interesting that she came home and drew this*. “That’s me, and that’s you, and THAT’S Daddy!”

Whoa.

Fathers, while your children are little, you are God to them in so many ways. They are forming their opinion about the nature of God based on who you are. Mothers are important too. But, fathers, just look again.

The way you discipline is the way they’ll expect God to discipline.

The way you reward is the way they’ll expect God to reward.

The way you love is the way they’ll expect God to love.

It’s weighty, your job.

But fear not.

You too can do all things through Christ who strengthens even the strongest of dads.