High school.

The year, 1990 something.

It was Valentine’s week and the student council had us fill out computer generated surveys to see which boys and girls were most compatible. Genius! Cut to the chase and just narrow it down!  I was excited to see which young men would be on my top five list.

And wouldn’t you know it?

#1 on my list…

My brother.

MY BROTHER!!!

Oh, the disappointment.  As if high school isn’t hard enough already?!?

But, time marched on, we both managed to find prom dates we weren’t related to, and I learned you can’t find love through a compatibility survey that lists people with your SAME LAST NAME?!?!

I’m not bitter.

If you ask me, Valentine’s Day has never been all it’s cracked up to be.  A week and a half ago, we were all scrambling to find the perfect (not too expensive) gift. Today, the flowers are starting to droop, the chocolate is long gone, and no one actually eats those conversation hearts anyway.  Everything in the stores is now 75% off and we could care less because, “Ooh, look! They have Peeps and Cadbury Eggs!”

In my own life, I’ve seen this holiday evolve from roses and romantic dinners to Elmer’s glue and shoeboxes in a matter of just a few short years.  Life looks different than it did twenty years ago and I’m not going lie, sometimes I miss the roses.

But here’s what I get instead and I’m convinced it’s why I fall in love with my husband again everyday…

For the past fifteen years, each morning before our feet even hit the floor, he has taken my hand and prayed, “Thank you, Lord, for Jess.”  There is no doubt in my mind there were mornings when those words were hard for him to say. There were days when we loved each other a whole lot more than we liked each other, but still, we prayed.

The newness faded a long time ago, but there have been stories written in it’s place. Some are happy and some are sad. From newborn babies, to dying grandparents, and everything in between, I am continually amazed at how he directs my eyes away from the storms of this life and shows me the steady hand of Jesus instead.

There is something to be found in this season of life that I would not trade for roses on any given day. I know that at 3 am when somebody throws up, I give the bath and he changes the sheets.  We don’t have to exchange any words, we just know.  He knows there probably won’t ever come a day that I let the microwave run down to zero and I’m still baffled at how any human could hate peanut butter, but he does.

He unloads the dishwasher.  I put up the ponytails.

He helps with math.  I help with reading.

He cleans the gutters.  I mow the grass.

We’re finding our way through this life…together.

We laugh.

We cry.

We argue.

We forgive.

It’s messy and it’s fun. It’s hard and it’s worth it.

It’s not anything I could have imagined and it’s everything I’ve always wanted.

It’s now that I’m beginning to learn what love really looks like.  A lot of days it looks like work.  A lot of days it looks like sacrifice.  We’ve been in this marriage long enough to see each other at our best and our worst.  The lines on our faces are more defined, the gray hair is harder to hide and let’s be honest, gravity is no one’s friend.

And yet…he stays.

He stays because he thinks I’m funny.  He stays because I listen well.  He stays because he thinks I’m beautiful.  He stays because he has a thousand reasons that I’ll never understand. He stays…because a long time ago, he promised he would.

In the midst of a crazy morning, when there wasn’t much money and even less time, Valentine’s Day looked like two plain pieces of paper, folded in half, and exchanged over a table of sticky hands and spilled milk.  Two pieces of paper saying all of the things a four dollar card never could.  365 days of  “I’m sorry’s and I love you’s”. Promises to keep trying, to keep loving, and to keep praying.

 

So today, in the midst of candy and chaos, love your family well and love God even more. After all, it was God who loved you first and He gave this family to you as a beautiful and precious gift.