Draw Me Nearer

I was driving home from a piano lesson the summer we started dating and noticed that even on an overcast day the world around me seemed more beautiful than I had observed before. It occurred to me that it was the experience of our new love that opened my eyes to see things with a radiance I had previously missed.

Even then in our younger, immature love, I knew God was the ultimate reason for this newfound wonder I had for the scenery I beheld. I thought of the hymn lyrics:

"Heav’n above is softer blue, Earth around is sweeter green!

Something lives in every hue Christless eyes have never seen," 

and acknowledged it was because of Jesus' love for me that I could experience fully the life-changing, all-encompassing human joy of loving and being loved. I was already learning something of what it was like to be yours and have you as mine and all the pleasure exclusive love could bring.

Amazingly, fifteen years later, I continue to see the world around me differently because of you. Your love is constantly changing me. It helps keep me from cynicism and despair. It helps me have hope in times of fear and trial. It softens my heart and disarms me when I'm ready to fight and yet it calls me to take up arms and make war when I need to. It helps me face things I'd rather run from and overall continues to plummet me to depths of joy I didn't know were humanly possible. 

I know my experience of our covenant love is a tangible expression of God's loyal, faithful love for me because your love is in the image of his love. And tasting and seeing your goodness and kindness to me and enjoying the benefits of your love for me doesn't make me worship you, it makes my heart collapse in praise and adoration of him.

Because the older I get and the longer we're married, I see more of who I really am. And I know I don't deserve the honor you give me and the love you show me. I know I have not earned the thoughtful things you do for me and the selflessness with which you serve me. I've disappointingly found I'm not really as lovable as I originally thought. 

So my soul continues to be awakened to the fact that, because of you, I see more of what the Author of Grace is like, and because of you, I know his love better.

The truth is, this doesn't happen because you've reached a certain plateau of spirituality. It happens primarily because you have been conquered by a love that's greater than mine. You've been loved with a love greater than anything a woman can offer and it has humbled you and you have submitted to it and it has kept you near to him.

So the effort you put forth and your daily choice of loving me through fifteen years of marriage is evidence of your submission to him and the cords of his love that have tightly bound you to him. That's something the "ball and chain" of marriage can't accomplish. And you know I've tried it.

So as joyful as my experience of our love is, it makes me crave the Perfection of its source. It makes me know there is even more love and joy than we've had. And that truth is astounding! There are heights to it and depths of it we will one day know completely and it only makes sense we will get to experience it together there, overwhelmed, undone, and awe-filled!

On that day when I am presented before him holy and blameless, I'll then know fully a fraction of what I know now - I have been loved with a faithful love I could never earn and certainly don't deserve. 

May he continue to draw us nearer and prepare us better for that day. Happy 15th Anniversary, my joy and my love!

I Married This Man

I listened to you preach on Sunday, watching you form your words and pull that passion right out of your heart. I knew the Word had kept you up late and got you up early and it needed to come out. And I was praying for you, assuring you even though I couldn't help you carry the burden of your care for the church, that I could carry you.

And as I listened and saw your wet eyes at the thought of the cords of love that have tightly bound you to him, I took that Word from your heart to mine and couldn't help but thank God for it and for who he is making you.

They say the longer you're married, the more people you marry. And I think it's true because I married many different versions of Matthew Owen these 14 years. I married the young energetic one with boyish enthusiasm and loads of ambition. The one who drove me and my mom around Greenville with reckless abandon, hair blowing in the wind in our rented convertible. I married the seminary student pulling all-nighters drinking coke and coffee by the cups full, never turning down an opportunity to socialize or give his opinion. I married the one hesitant to become a father and then watched his heart fold in tenderness cradling our newborns, resolute in disciplining our toddlers, and compassionate in nurturing our tweens. I married the dad who rises and bends with all the back-breaking and heart-wrenching duties of fatherhood. I married the entry-level call center employee who worked his way up to Audi Business Analyst, being offered a job from a competing marketing company with the salary and perks to boot. I married the one who thanked God for the opportunity but turned it down because pastoral ministry was calling him louder. I married the man who had to tie that call to the altar and give it to the Lord, not knowing if he'd ever see it again. I married the one who knelt before our MI church congregation, since the Lord did give him that desire of his heart, and watched them ordain him to be a minister of the gospel. I married the man who needed me by his bedside off and on for two years while he fought a strange, troubling and sometimes debilitating physical illness. I married the one who rose up out of that bed of affliction, and has never stopped humbly acknowledging his dependence on God for his next step and breath. I married the man who realized his ambition alone couldn't make things happen and his opinions didn't really matter that much. And I married the man who took a chance on the girl from a broken home who had no religious pedigree in which to boast, and commit to give me his name and trust me with his heart.

I still have to pinch myself and thank God that I married this man. What do I have that I haven't received?

On our 14th anniversary, I thank God for the Matthew Owen you are today. I don't know what man I'll have married in five more years or ten, but I pray that God will use each trial, each joy, each success, and each failure to make you more and more like Jesus. I see him restoring his image in you and I like the way it looks. Even better than Leonardo DiCaprio.

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He's Our...

Home Sweet Home.

So thankful to be back together as a family!

 

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Stay on the Bike: A 13th Anniversary Admonition

I left her tough and tender hand for your untried one that Saturday morning.

You opened it up to me and I held on tight, in faith, to my husband-to-be, wondering what you would be.

Samuel Rutherford was right. This bride loved the beauty and simplicity of her white satin dress, but on that day, I was only eyeing all the handsomeness of your chiseled 22-year-old face. We looked like kids, but even kids can sometimes know what's up.

So we looked up, lifting our hopes and voices at the front of our church to the only One worthy of our praise.

"For Thyself, best gift divine,
To our race so freely given.
For that great, great love of Thine,
Peace on earth, and joy in heaven:
Christ our Lord, to Thee we raise
This our hymn of grateful praise."

We let the wind carry us where it would and it blew us right into the city named after it.

I clumsily followed you around Lake Michigan on my bike too, trying to remember how to ride (and they say you never forget). We laughed, joking about pedestrians passing me while I was the one on wheels. But we stayed on our bikes, basking in the electricity of young married love, fed by a city as energetic and ambitious as we were.

You sat through My Fair Lady gleaning helpful knowledge about Spain and rain and Hampshire and hurricanes.

We went to a steakhouse and I checked my fruit and veggies at the door for my meat and potatoes man.

For breakfast, before our food, we each ordered dark black coffee and sweet and tangy freshly squeezed o.j., eyes wide over how tasty everything was, and over . . . the bill! Who knew we should've made a meal out of those drinks to stay within budget?!

Figuring out life together was a lot like my relearning to ride that bike. Couples passed us who had been at it longer telling us those molehills I made mountains wouldn't seem so big once we'd really climbed a few. Those expectations I had and demands I made would show that you could never be for me what only God could. And all those adventures you shared that I was so quick to reason our way out of and shoot down on the spot would highlight the fact that you wanted me to be a friend to laugh and dream with, not a legal counselor or risk assessor.

We needed space to have some wrecks and work things out on our own along the way, but we also needed examples to show us how it's done. To show us what it looked like to stay on the bike and to love God and each other more than we wanted to be loved ourselves.

It's 13 years later, and I'll be the first to admit I still have a ways to go. But I think by the way you've learned to love me, you've actually made me better at loving. You slow up for me as I still timidly pedal at times and push me to go faster and pedal harder when you know that's what I need. And sometimes I have to tell you that fast isn't everything. Half the fun is in how we get there - the journey - not just in arriving. The road is full of bumps and sudden turns, so in some ways we're still working it out one ride at a time. But in other ways, by God's grace, we keep pace pretty well with those older pros.

Photo Credit: Robyn Moore

So, to you young couples still new at this sometimes (often?) difficult marriage ride, trying to steady that bike from tipping or even thinking it would be so much easier to abandon it at the curb, could we ask you to stay on the bike? We are giving you space to fall and try to work it out together. But we're also here if you need a hand to help you up, to dust off the gravel, and to get back on.

2015: Walking Forward with a Limp

Lunches packed, backpacks zipped, and the girls buckled in. Matt pulls the van out of the garage this morning as "Speak Life" blares through the speakers. He's doing his own cheorgraphy to make Ruby laugh. We're all forced smiles and silly dancing to hide our sadness that the time has come for our family to go our separate ways once again. Nineteen and a half days of science experiements, easy baking in the new oven, ninja swords slashing, library bags stuffed full of the allotted 25 books checked out per card, more sweets and late mornings and nights than we see any other time of the year. It. was. wonderful.

Days with this girl whose precociousness was cute at age 7 but is something else at age 9. ;)

She and I are BFFs we say, and we are, but she likes her new Justice clothes too and is excited to wear them back to school. She's reading Heaven for Kids and I pulled it off her bed today and couldn't help but thank God for the way she's marking it up and I murmer a quick prayer that it will sink down deep too.

Endless hours with this one.

She's a lot of bark and some bite. But she curls up on my lap at 6 1/2 still like she did when she was 3 and watches "Night at the Museum." She has some tears last night about going back to school and I take her in my arms and we run to Jesus together. I wish it wouldn't have taken me almost 10 years into parenting to learn to talk about him, yes, but to him more. Every time she fears, we call to him. Where does your help come from, Ruby? Your help comes from the Lord. Hear it. Believe it. Live like it, precious girl.

And then the one I get to be with all the time for awhile longer.

He melts this mama to mush with that smile and tender heart. We pass a boy in the grocery store with his arm in a sling and Schaeffer wants to stop and pray for him. So we do. He hears an ambulance and says, "Mama, shouldn't we pray about them?" So we do. Son, where else would we go, but to him? Surely his ear is not too dull to hear and his arm not too short to save.

Today, I'm tempted to curse time that takes my babies from me and pushes us too quickly back into our routine. But although time takes, today it also gives. So, I gather my heavy heart and move forward to do the next thing.

I move forward though, with a limp. Some are charging into 2015 full steam ahead. I wish I could, but charging isn't for me. John Piper said, "Any progress forward we make in this life is with a limp."

And, oh, how I feel it! It's humbling, this limp is. It reminds me of the times these past months that I've wrestled with God, like Jacob. "Not your will, but mine be done," I've said. And he gently reminds me, like my wise grandpa did, that you can't whip God. So instead I whisper, "Yes, Lord," and trust and struggle up, not quite the same.

It reminds me of the same sins I'm wrestling with in this wandering heart of mine, some for weeks, months, and years past. The battle is tiring, not because I'm always fighting as hard as I should, but because the fight just never lets up.

And, it reminds me how much I need others to help me on to God.

This man.

Yes, him. He limps too, he'll tell you. Especially when he looks at his "To Do" list every day, and even more on Sunday mornings when the Word weighs so heavy on him it just might crush him and he thinks what in the world is man, entrusted to handle truths so great? Yes, this man, whose chest I can't touch because the beating there only reminds me of his mortality, and it's too much to bear. Yes, this man, that I'm called to help. Some helper I am with my debilitating limp. But he understands and gives me a knowing glance as we link our arms of flesh that certainly will fail us and lean hard on the One who never will.

And these ones.

How quickly they've won a place in our hearts! There have been some trials and tears and many laughs and new experiences already that have bonded us together. The shepherd, I know him, he's a loving pastor, a faithful doer, and an intentional and careful dreamer, and we are following and growing. They know about our limp and they love us still. They've even bravely shared that they too, walk with one. So we promise together to hold each other up and help each other home.

Walking forward into 2015, then, I ask - we ask - God to do things in our lives and our church that can only be explained by the fact that he's a great God who loves and uses weak, feeble, and even limping sinners for his glory.

"Yes, Lord, walking in the way of your laws, we wait for you; your name and renown are the desire of our hearts!" (Isaiah 26:8)

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*I wrote this yesterday, but am just getting it posted today.

**Thanks to RJ and Emily Vergara for some of the (better) photos in this entry.

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No Turning Back

Our lives met that summer. Paths crossed and eyes locked. Love tiptoed in and grabbed hold of our hearts and turned them right over. Although everything seemed just perfect when we'd met for lunch, counting the hours until we could talk or see each other again. Trying as hard and we could to be reasonable about this whole relationship thing. Yeah. Like that happened. Then you put a diamond on it in November. And the rest is a flurry of white satin, fresh calla lilies, and covenant-making, with fondant on top.

I threw what few things I had left at my mom's house into my suitcase that significant summer day and we loaded into my little Honda CX - now ours - and I followed you north without looking back. Instead, I looked...at you.

When you talked. When you ate. When you listened. When you didn't even know it. My eyes were fixed.

We had to start making a way in life - now ours - and sometimes it was as clumsy as a three-legged race...trying to work in tandum but tripping up and falling down and wondering if we'd ever move forward in this mission God had for you and me - now us.

When no one else saw us he did and in mercy he told us to take up our mess and walk.

"For that is what God is like. He is our God forever and ever, and He will guide us." (Psalm 48:14)

I met your people and they became my people. Your meat-loving appetite influenced me. And you even started to consider food from Panera to be a meal, not a snack. But what I began to notice wasn't that I was becoming more like you or you were becoming like me but that we were becoming us...a whole new unity...not completely you and not completely me, but absolutely right.

Almost without noticing, we were moving forward together without struggle, not even always side by side. And that was fine. We had a mutual trust and a deeper understanding that freed us to do what we needed. Still my eye would catch yours across the room and you'd throw me a heart-melting wink and our world would stop momentarily - eyes still fixed. But then my people, your people, our people...all His people. We were on mission.

Then it came time to leave those people and I found myself still looking at you. Not back. I chose you again over my comfort and familiar.

I hope you saw it in every box I packed, that I gladly gave it up for you. I hope you noticed it in every hard goodbye I said, that I loved you more. I know you did, because you know when a woman follows a man it doesn't mean she has forgotten the way or can't find it on her own. You know I'm on this path whether you're with me or not, and I know that's one of the reasons you love me. I'm not a tagalong. But following my Lord often shows itself most by my willingness to follow my man. And, I'm all in with you, Honey, no turning back.

 

To keep it real though, occasionally this path with you can feel about as spacious as a public transport in China. Is there really room for us both on here and are you sure you didn't miss your stop?! :)

But along with the narrowness, also comes a chance to widen my heart, to make room for more people to love and more love to grow for the same people, including you. Because God's love is an ocean and from my heart should flow waves of it reaching all He can through me.

Following also means I doubly feel the joy and pain of the path. We see the pain of our people and carry that pit in our stomachs along with them. We see the the Spirit drawing attention to Christ in someone's life and we have no greater joy! But too, I see my sin struggles and I see your sin struggles. I feel my need for the gospel but I also feel your need for the gospel. You struggle through a passage you're preaching on and to some degree I do too. We are united. When your heart gets cut mine bleeds. And when you smile my heart laughs.

Did anyone tell me marriage is borrowing another persons trouble and triumphs and gladly taking them as your own? Your sickness, your health, your poverty, your wealth. It's all mine too. Marriage is raw commitment. Following is counter-cultural.

But I've seen you forsake all you have to take me up with my sin struggles and untamed tongue and stunted fruit-bearing and wake up with my bed head and bad breath and it's beautiful. And I know you've carried my cross more than a time or two. Day after day it's a flesh and blood example to our kids of what Jesus did for them. It preaches to our neighbors that there is a better way - albeit not perfect - than the craziness of all the redefining the world's trying to do.

So, on your 35th birthday, I want to tell you I'll stay on this path with you and your people - our people. I'll cling to you and your happiness and heartaches like they're my own. I'll look your sin in the face and humble my proud heart, freeing you to need the gospel too, like you've done so many times for me. And I'll keep my eyes fixed on you, learning all I can from you, loving all there is to love about you. No turning back, no turning back.

 

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Take That, Cleopatra

Lancelot had Guinevere

Scarlett O’Hara needed Rhett

Elizabeth humbled Mr. Darcy

Romeo loved Juliet

 

Immortalized forever

Though their creators turned to dust

Archetypes of passion

But they could never be us

 

To Solomon, the Shulamite

Luther found Von Bora

Antony had Cleopatra

Lewis was surprised by Joy

 

Lovers real as sand or sea

Their vows of love yet repercuss

Still remembered when we’re forgotten

But they could never be us

 

They may see romantic vistas

Paris, Venice, Santorini Island

They may vow forever pledges

Sealed with roses, wine, and diamonds

 

What we know they’ve never dreamed

Their sun will never reach our solstice

They may be a lot of things

But they could never be us

-MJO, 2012

 

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Happy Birthday

to you.

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