Today is a special day.
Today marks 19 years of marriage.
Crazy to think Adam has loved me for more of my life than he hasn’t.
I am a blessed woman!
One thing I have learned most in these 19 years…
Is that LOVE changes a person.
I can honestly say that I have a husband that loves like Jesus…
And he married quite a mess… I mean that humbly and sincerely.
I can also openly share that Jesus knew…
This insecurity-prone, little girl would need the powerful, consistent love,
Of a husband like Adam to do what we have been called to do.
Loving me is not always easy…
I should know… it’s taking ME a lifetime to figure out how to do it.
When we married that rainy Saturday, 19 years ago…
I didn’t even know who I was.
As strange as it may sound… I don’t even feel like it was the “real me.”
It was more like a made up version of about 100 different peoples perspective of who I thought I should be.
I was lost girl in a fancy gown.
Who I would be become…
Was and continues to be secretly sketched out.
The first 2 decades of my life were spent trying to earn love.
Though I had loving parents, most of those 20 years I felt largely below average…
Non special.
The eyes I had for myself were critical, cold and shallow.
Almost 20 years have come and gone in my marriage…
At times I can be be just as hard to love, but I can honestly say…
I am learning to enjoy being me…
Which oddly enough makes me more enjoyable.
Undeserved love has that effect on a person.
It teaches a person to give themselves grace.
Real love changes a person.
It invites the distant soul…
Into nearness.
It gives them a heart to take in beauty with unscaled eyes.
It teaches one how to become a friend to themselves…
To really love themselves.
It teaches how to recognize and celebrate their own beauty instead of deny it…
And it keeps the heart open to relationships…
Enabling us to boldly and authentically call out the beauty in others.
Real love releases freedom.
Freedom is so incredibly valuable!
Honestly, I have learned that most often the greatest bondage in my life starts between my two ears.
The enemy doesn’t even need an army to defeat or distract me if I am busily doing the work for him.
Quite often a whole lotta love and a whole lotta taking thoughts captive is needed in order to change what we believe about ourselves.
Our thoughts will either be swords of truth battling for us…
Or weapons of lies stirring wars within us.
WE actually get to design our thought lives…
What am I designing?
Am I designing a world where love reigns?
This is a valuable question I need to constantly ask myself.
These last 2 years of being a missionary has challenged almost everything I have ever believed about myself.
It has pushed me to new limits.
They haven’t been my shiniest 2 years, but they have been my rawest.
And yet, love has not been withdrawn.
Not from God, not from my family, not from Adam.
19 years…
19 years of tasting morsels of The Father’s love.
This love without a doubt has not only helped me to love myself…
But it has also activated me to supernaturally love others…
To love in ways that my selfish, fearfilled nature would without a doubt resist.
They say you can’t change a person…
And in someways I can agree with that statement.
But I can also say without a doubt…
Real, lasting love, though almost never easy…
Does indeed change a person.
I think that is what Paul meant when he wrote the words in 1 Corinthians 13…
It was a promise of sorts…
That “love never fails.”
And never means never!
With all the adventures and twists and turns that still await…
This is the one promise I cling to to carry me through.
I pray it encourages you as well.
Blessings of love,
Kelly
Recent Comments