Where do I even start with explaining even the ripples from the splash called “wedlock”? First, I might say that no matter how much time you spend with someone prior to marriage, you’ll never be fully prepared to share every moment of life. It’s humbling, really. I have a system for everything, and unless I married a clone of myself (which would be terrifying), she would have a different system or none at all. I think it might be the “none at all” that is harder than another routine.

With divergent systems, at least you both care about it being a certain way and you (or she) can change/merge/replace one with the other. When only one of you has a way it “should be”, though, it becomes a burden to her as she has to try to remember all these little (and big) things that previously didn’t matter. To me, it’s order. To her, it’s labor (not the child-bearing kind). Let the self-sacrifice begin.

But it’s worth it. On my own, even dating/engaged, I was able to withdraw into my safe haven, put all my ducks in a row, and have it “my way”. When Sue and I sleep and wake in one bed, share one sink, one toilet, one shower, one kitchen and coffeemaker, and one home, “my way” has to change. Sure, I could create a little bubble somewhere in the apartment and make it my little safe place where all is in systematic harmony, but I think I’d just be avoiding the painful gain. As my friend, Will, put it, “Imagine saying, ‘I’m so happy!’, while balling, and you get the idea.” It’s true. Many a day one or both of us feel like crying as our lives collide and we learn our new normal, but we are so happy :).

Probably our biggest strength (by God’s grace) through these four weeks and the months before has been communication. Granted, I sometimes err on the side of expressing too much and not holding my tongue when I should probably sacrifice a violated preference, but I’m working on it (baby steps). Sue’s the other way, sacrificing first and speaking second (I try to encourage her to let me know, so I can compromise/change, too). Even here, we’re learning and growing as we practice it in every area.

When all is said and done, four weeks in, I am a blessed man. As it says on our dining room mirror (with these really neat stick-on letters):

Life is not about waiting
for the Storm to pass
but about learning
to Dance in the Rain

Those we–you and I–get to hope for with confidence and smile toward with anticipation. Freedom and emancipation will come! The cry of this year’s Passion Conference in Atlanta, Georgia, will be fulfilled. God’s justice will wait no longer when the day of Isaiah 61:2b and following arrives. Yes, Lord!

I particularly love Isaiah’s concluding metaphor as he likens it to the preparation of a bridegroom and bride. My day is only 66 sunrises from now and I’m giddy! Simply put, I can’t wait! How much more for the wedding of the Lamb and the reception to follow?!? Righteousness, joy, and gladness will rain down–oh, what a day!

Thank You, Father, for Your promises, especially those intricately wrapped up in a single passage. You’ve delivered on part of it already, which shows us Your guarantee to complete the rest. How we love You, Father!

Leading. This weekend I started discovering that leading means to follow. I am wholly inadequate to lead the godly woman with whom the Lord has graced my life. As with most things, my natural reaction is to attempt it in my own strength and through my own efforts. Most things that I’ve desperately desired have been easy…until this.

The key is that I’m not just leading a woman in the trivial affairs of this world–I’m leading her into the image of Christ. “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.” (Eph. 5:25-27)

To lead my beloved to Christ, I must first be pursuing Him. Never in all my days has my time with Him been more critical. The only reason we should marry is to better glorify the Lord and to reflect His love for the Church. If I do not lead Sue (and myself) to Christlikeness, I fail. And my self-dependence won’t work here. I either know my Lord and have relationship with Him, or I don’t. Father, draw me to Yourself. Jesus, show me Your love. Spirit, awaken my heart and stir deep affection for You. To lead is to follow.

Loving. Or rather, being loved. The other thing I began to grasp yesterday and today as I saw myself falter in leadership was that I didn’t know how to be loved. Love, agape love, unconditional love, means that nothing I can do changes it. I can’t fail badly enough to invalidate it. It isn’t fickle and it doesn’t change its mind. Agape is what the love of my life has given me. But I didn’t get it. I doubted it and I doubted her when I thought that my weakness in leading would shake our foundation. How wrong of me!

Sue has given me the greatest gift I could ever receive–the same as and that which Christ gave–unconditional, undeserving love. When I question it, I challenge the ultimate source, my Lord. He gave us this love for each other, and I am only prideful when I think she might revoke it while I wouldn’t. She has poured grace upon grace out to me, and I see Jesus in every day I experience her love.

To be loved is to trust. Trust Sue’s love, but more than that, trust our Father’s love. He will hold our hearts steadfast and keep us united as we walk in His light. “if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:7). Our fellowship is Jesus and we know from Romans 8 that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ. So it is with His love for one another inside of us. Nothing can separate us. When doubt or fear try to sneak in, I can and will rest on that promise, the promise made by my Father with whom there is no shifting shadow. I trust Him, and I trust Sue.

This is only the beginning. As Andrew Peterson said in his song, Dancing In The Minefields, “It was harder than we dreamed, but I believe that’s what the promise is for.”

The soloist of this romantic symphony, though, was a pink box, crowned with a small tapestry with special significance, and wrapped by a faint blue ribbon. Within the box lay five white foam poster boards decorated by gummy bears and chocolates to tell Susie of my love for her and set the stage for the question (on the last piece). The ring would remain in my pocket until that moment. Of lesser note, my iPad was set to one side with several songs in a playlist to give ambiance and dancing music, and my iPhone would hold the role of videographer to capture the event (under the shade of a plant on the counter).

Happy with the prepared outcome, I spun away the remaining workday hours until I could pick up Susie shortly after 5pm for our “care-free” date night. As I picked her up, my nervousness morphed into bouncy giddiness (it had to come out some way!) and we went on our merry way to Chipotle–one of her favorite places :). From there and under the graceful cover of darkness, courtesy of the end of Daylight Savings Time, I began weaving us up toward Linda’s house in far north Plano. Susie asked if she could know where we were going, but I smiled and said, “Nope, this is just one of my little special operations for my sweetheart” (trying and wishing to downplay it some as we made our way).

About two blocks south of the turn in to the neighborhood, I pulled out a handkerchief and asked Susie to blindfold herself. She knew we were in the general area of Linda’s, but I’d mentioned going for a walk in a park (many of which were nearby) so she figured it was something along those lines. Then we pulled up to the house and I asked her to stay put while I went to do “something”. I unlocked the door, went inside, and started to get things ready but realized I’d left my phone in the car–that wouldn’t do! So I ran back out, ducked into the car (she was still blindfolded), grabbed my phone, and said I’d be right back.

With everything finally in hand, I lit the candles, sprinkled the floor with the extra rose petals, started the music and began the video recording. Then I went to get Susie.

I led her by the hand up steps, down steps and then through the front door. At the entrance to the kitchen, I removed her blindfold and told her to open her eyes. I’m pretty sure the candles, flowers, music, and chocolates gave it away then :).

Then I led her to the box and asked her to open it while I smiled with love and looked on. Taking it all in, she opened it and read each card:

As she revealed the last card, I withdrew the ring box, lowered to one knee, and waited for her to turn. Then I asked her, “Will you marry me?” She said “Yes!”, I placed the ring her finger, and we hugged and rejoiced. As we soaked it all in, we danced. At first, it was instrumental piano pieces, but then transitioned to three special songs, “If You Could See What I See” and “The Vow”, by Geoff Moore & The Distance, and “You Said”, by Shane & Shane. It was the most wonderful moment of my life…thus far.

I rejoice and praise the Lord, our gracious and most wonderful heavenly Father, who knew Sue and I before we were born and planned out each of our lives before we came to be. Every step of the way has been a gift from His hand, and I can’t imagine any more precious gift than He has given me in Sue. I love her beyond measure and eagerly anticipate each day of serving her as a picture of Christ and the Church to the world. Thank You, Father, for Your goodness, grace, and love. Thank You, Jesus, for redeeming us from our sins and saving us to Your glory. Thank You, Spirit, for each surprise and for all of the prayers You inspired in so many hearts that have led to this day. Amen.

This year in June, the Lord helped me surrender my longing since childhood to be married. He brought me to the point where I said, “Lord, I’m willing to go wherever You want to take me, and though I believe marriage is Your will for me, I have no guarantee that it isn’t 20 years hence, so I’ll step forward, put my ‘yes’ on the table, and go to the peoples with Your glory.” That began the journey with a long-term sending organization to take the gospel to unreached peoples in the Middle East.

Then in September, I was blessed to go to the other East (Asia) to engage with university students and share the wonderful news of God’s grace through Jesus Christ. One of our trip leaders was a certain young woman named Susie. Throughout the trip, beginning in the airport stateside, the Lord seemed to cause our paths and conversations to harmonize, even though we each were honestly trying to set this unexpected drama aside so as not to be distracted on our mission (the Lord was so good to make that possible, though my journal entries were packed with my heart’s wrestlings over this godly girl).

In God’s unmistakable providence, He already had Susie moving down from Minnesota (her home until September 29th) to Dallas to work more closely at the e3 ministry offices here. That week between the end of the trip and her arrival here saw a deluge of prayer pouring forth from both of our hearts. “Lord, what are You doing in all of this?”… “Could this be the one for whom my heart has longed?”… “What does this mean for where You have been leading me long-term?”…

Sunday, October 2nd, Susie and I went for a walk and settled under a lamppost on a street corner in the neighborhood. I originally had a flow of things to say, but it all seemed to escape me, so I started with what I knew to be true. I told her of the godly virtues I saw within her–how she feared the Lord, prayed with great faith, showed remarkable kindness and grace to all around her, loved the Lord first, desired to take His truth to the peoples, and of course, how breathtakingly beautiful she was (and is). I’m sure other things fell in between, but I finished by asking if she would like to enter an intentional relationship of pursuing the Lord together with the understood destination of marriage.

Susie responded with a statement and a question. She said that she was Christ’s first, to which I fully agreed. Then she asked what I thought about martyrdom and going to a country and people where it was a real possibility. I told her that I thought it was the best way to exit this life and go to be with the Lord and that I was (and am) all in. Many more words followed as the planners in us took a few steps forward and talked through what this would look like, but as we walked away from the lamppost, hand in hand, we took on the titles, “boyfriend” and “girlfriend”.

In the days that followed, our gracious Lord and Father surprised us over and over again with all the little details and intricacies which He had been crafting in our lives across the years. We continued walking together, talking together, cooking together (definitely a sign of someone special in my life!), and opening our hearts to begin dreaming together…

I’ve never been one to take long with figuring out whether something might work in a relationship, and this was no exception. I kept looking for that “thing” that would tell me it wasn’t going to work or that I needed to draw my heart back in, but I never found it. I just saw grace and beauty and a heart devoted to the Lord in everything we did. So on October 8th, I told Susie what my heart had been saying since that first walk–”I love you.” I knew it was quick and I didn’t have any expectation of her returning in kind, but I wanted to step out in vulnerability and let her know where I was. She said, “thank you” and we smiled and continued talking.

A week later, we were cooking and dancing in the kitchen of our dear friend, Linda. I can’t remember what the song was, but I think was probably singing along with it to Susie when she exclaimed, “I love you!” It took me a second for it to register and really, it wasn’t the words themselves but the surprise on her face that told me something epic had just happened. Then it hit me–Susie loves me! I picked her up and spun her around as our I love you’s poured forth. Hearts aren’t used to holding how much joy we each felt in that moment. It was bliss.

The next day, we lined up plane tickets to visit Susie’s parents in Idaho at the first of November. I think it was then that the only conversation about rings took place, though she was gracious to lend me her Minnesota girls for input from afar. That took a load off of me as I really wanted to make sure I picked something that was perfectly Sue. I also slipped her ring onto my pinky finger to figure out her size. I thought I was being sly, but she silently noticed :).

By Tuesday of that week, I had looked at literally several hundred rings online, and on Wednesday, I went into the store to see them in person and narrow them down. Two stood out so I sent pictures to Susie’s friends and awaited their thoughts. The logical side of me was leaning one way, but my heart knew which one was right. The girls quickly affirmed that and the next day, the transaction took place–I could pick it up the following Monday (October 24).

That weekend, we made a little debut to the online world through a set of pictures taken at the Dallas Arboretum with some wonderful friends and family here. Our lives continued to merge, day by day, through the normal things of life and as we began working through a pre-marital workbook. Did I mention that we’re both planners?

Nearing the present, this past weekend we flew up to Idaho for a delightful weekend with Susie’s parents. We talked for hours on end, shared deliciously cooked/baked/stewed meals, and watched as the Lord wove our hearts together. The Lord even gave us an extra evening with them as our flight back to Dallas was delayed and pushed to Monday (November 7th). I left Idaho with a new Mom and Dad. And Mom, before we left the house for the airport early Monday morning, gave me a hug and quietly whispered, “when you figure out when you are going to propose, if you can let me know, I’ll try to get a flight down to be there and celebrate. Do you know when you are planning to ask her?” I smiled and replied, “tomorrow” :). Needless to say, a flight didn’t exactly happen, but Skype was ready to help cross the miles.

Continue reading: Part 2 ~ The Proposal…

And tho sickness may come,
Or a storm rages on,
Still we have a strong shelter,
For the Lord is our helper.

For this path weaving ‘head,
Side by side we will tread,
Wrapped in covenant love,
Sent from heaven above.

So go forth in this day,
As the lily doth sway,
Beautiful and free,
Knowing I loveth thee.

Why is there an ache, then, instead of joy? Is it that the expectations under which we took shelter didn’t stand up to the storm? And in the downpour, have we forgotten the Father’s love, which is “way too much to give us lesser things”?

Perhaps we transfer the rejection of our hope to a rejection of ourselves. Yet we are not abandoned. He is faithful even when we are faithless, and He has promised never to leave or forsake us.

In the Psalms, the Lord is called a “strong tower” and one in whom we can find shelter under His wings. With Him being so big, both the tower and the wings always seemed to be large and strong but impersonal. In those wings, though, can you see the care of young chicks tucked tightly into the soft feathers underneath, warm and safe? And within the fortress, might there be a hearth and fire with a rug before it on which to curl up and rest?

If we could see the new life and warm rays on the other side of the storm, the thunder and cold would be easy, or at least easier, to bear. The Lord chooses disappointments, tears, and nights, though, to build our faith and nudge us to lean on Him. He won’t give us lesser things. He loves us too much for that.

‘Cause what if Your blessings come through raindrops
What if Your healing comes through tears?
And what if a thousand sleepless nights
Are what it takes to know You’re near?

What if my greatest disappointments
Or the aching of this life
Is the revealing of a greater thirst
This world can’t satisfy?

And what if trials of this life
The rain, the storms, the hardest nights
Are Your mercies in disguise?

~Laura Story (Blessings, excerpt)

And so it was when silence broke,
Astonished, surprised, ‘nearly choked.
Could it be, those words so dear?
A dream? For real? Are we here?

At that the dance began anew,
Twirling, spinning, forever true.
Hearts to heaven, amazing grace,
Reflecting each, our Father’s face.

Now continue the journey on,
Quilling, inking, our new song.
Perfect love casts out fear,
And only joy evokes a tear.

‎”Oh, magnify the LORD with me,
and let us exalt his name together!”
~Psalm 34:3 ♥

As foll’wers of the sacred cross,
And sharers in the worthy cost,
We dare not count our lives as lost,
If in Him we abide.

For then give we the gift of love,
With ne’er a string attached above,
No sacrifice too great my dove,
All this agape cried.

And now go forth into the day,
In worship, trial, work, or play,
For this I hear the Savior say,
The Spirit be your guide.

“In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.” ~1 John 4:10-14

“We love because he first loved us.” ~1 John 4:19

Once treading I saw a scene so bright,
A lily entranced in the Savior’s delight.
‘Ere floating she went, uplifted by grace,
Radiance and splendor, reflecting her face.

Into this ballet He ushered me,
Enraptured and speechless and without plea,
‘Save one to remain and play a part,
Surrendering all, indeed, my heart.

“Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” ~Matthew 6:28b-29