Seventeen Years Later..

Last week, we celebrated seventeen years of marriage.  God has done much in our lives in the last seventeen years.  We are not anywhere near where I dreamed of being in this stage of my life and while to most of the world it looks like we are in a worse place than what I had hoped because we don't have a fancy house, enjoy nice vacations, have a growing retirement, or anything that I used to value..This story that we are living out is so much more beautiful than I ever imagined it could be because Jesus is the center.  

When we first married, I was nineteen and so getting as big a diamond on my ring as possible was very important to me.  DH was only twenty-one though when he bought the ring so big doesn't even begin to describe it and so I thought then that someday I would trade up, as is traditional, by celebrating an anniversary getting something grander.  Well as God has done in most areas of my life, I don't want a big ring anymore.  While I still have a long way to go, God is beginning to make some progress in my heart where stuff is concerned and I am beginning to see the value in living a more simple and focused life with greater purpose.   So this year when Sean came home and said that he thought it would be nice if we each got new silver bands with the Chinese characters faith and love engraved on them to wear on our ring fingers, I was all in.  No diamonds (which seem to always scratch my babies anyway), no high price tag, nothing fancy at all..just a simple silver ring to symbolize our marriage with the characters of China to symbolize the journey God has led us on in caring for the fatherless with the meaning of faith and love which have both meant so much as our relationship has grown these last seventeen years.  

I was seventeen when I said yes to marry this man and, while many things have changed between us, I am grateful that God has allowed our love to grow.  I am most thankful that God continues to show me His heart through His word and that I am able to live out His purposes as I care for my family.  What a treasure His word is to me.  I pray that as DH and I grow older together we will continue to give God this life that He has given us so that He might continue to write our stories and we would live in big ways for Him!