Me & Him
I first met the Farmer when I was fifteen and he was twenty-four.
That almost decade wide age gap isn’t such a big deal now but obviously it was then. We have played the what if game and wondered what our life would be like if he had waited for me to grow up and we had married younger. But we don’t ponder on that too much because God’s timing was perfect and all of the twist and turns; mountains climbed and valleys faithfully walked apart prepared us to love one another well through all of the twist and turns, mountain ascending and valley stumbling moments of the last twenty-sixish years.
We have marveled with genuine amazement at God bringing us together. Early on it was not uncommon for one of us to stop with this astounded expression on our face as we exclaimed, “I can’t believe I married Rob Hadding” or “I can’t believe I married Marty Anthony.”
I think you would find that neither one of us in a million years would have seen us in Louisiana raising pigs and chickens with children scattered in various states and being the awesome grandparents that we are but here we are. And it is as wonderful and ridiculous as it sounds.
Martin Luther said, “The first love is drunken. When the intoxication wears off, then comes the real marriage love.”
I guess, depending on how you define that intoxication, it has worn off. Hard days and difficult moments have a way to cause the silly to melt away and if any couple sings a song of nothing but a perfect happy all the time marriage they are either liars or very very dull people who take no risk in life or wholeheartedly follow after God. Notice that hard and difficult are not the same as unhappy. You can happily walk the hard and difficult paths with love in your heart. And never will you find following after God to be smooth sailing.
He makes me laugh like no other. He pushes me to be better and encourages me to be more ~ more fully the human God intended for each of us to be. He has been used by God to shatter my life, and me his, only for God to reshape the pieces back together into something altogether more lovely and perfect than we could have imagined our two lives becoming one would be.
My heart still finds much delight whenever I see his face. I still smile a little whenever I notice a text from him and there is a contentment to settling down in our bed beside him each night that doesn’t fade.
Our love is far past that initial giddiness. It’s been tested and tried and proven true. We have stood side by side and weathered the storms of life and there is no other I would rather go through time with.
This man, my always Valentine, is the one to whom God has used to shelter me and to sharpen me.
And I am so very very grateful for him.
