Lessons of Love

I'd like to share with you a few brief lessons I have learned from my first year of marriage. Keep in mind, I'm only twenty. My experiences are microscopic when compared to those of someone who has been around longer. Also, remember that me and my husband are 100% imperfect!

The first thing I learned from marriage was… I cannot rely on my husband if I haven't first relied on Christ. Aaron and I had the unique experience of spending the first three months of our marriage living in travel trailer at a Christian camp in the Black Hills. Let me tell you. Starting your marriage in a cramped camper makes getting used to living with each other happen really fast! It was incredibly hard as a recently independent collage girl to learn to share my life honestly with my husband. When something with my job didn't go according to plan, I often wanted to bottle it up. Aaron, however, had other plans. He helped me realize my struggles are his struggles, and our struggles are God's struggles. I am only able to have complete faith in my husband, because I have complete faith in my Savior.

The second thing I learned from marriage was... if something was going wrong, we needed to be there for each other. We needed to show up for our new marriage in ways that were very different from when we dated. When we became frustrated with each other, we could not hang up a phone and each go our separate ways to calm down. We had to lay it all out on the table, come to a conclusion, and move on together. The most valuable lesson we learned was to fight like Christ. Stay with me, I'll explain. In the Bible, when someone disagreed with Jesus, did Jesus yell? Did Jesus belittle others? No! So, learning to calmly work through our differences was wonderful. We were finally able to have conversations that would have been impossible before.

The third thing I learned from marriage was…it is SO important to encourage and support each other! We have had to make some tough decisions this year. I know that if Aaron hadn't been right beside me making those decisions, we wouldn't have been able to move forward!

I know I am not any kind of marriage expert! Hopefully this is a good start to many great years to come!

Purpose Driven

Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity.

1 Timothy 4:12

There it is folks. 

That one verse in the Bible that has always touched my heart in a special way ever since I first saw it painted on a wall in the youth room at church. 

This verse defined a majority of my adolescent life.

This verse was scribbled in my binder senior year.

This verse was so influential we asked our pastor to use it in our wedding. 

Allow me to expand and share a little of myself with you!

Before*

Speech: When I was twelve years old, I said my first swear word. I was standing outside the doors of my middle school gym after a long cross-country practice. I had no reason to say it. Maybe it was because I was so mad at God for taking my grandfather from me. I just wanted to "fit in." It made me feel dirty like I was no longer a proper lady or something. But, it also excited me. My parents never had a clue. At home I continued to be the perfect Christian daughter, but at school I was quickly establishing a sailor vocabulary and mean girl demeanor. Living by two opposite personalities sucks. It did not take long for my school attitude to become my permanent attitude. I hurt my parents. I hurt my little brothers. Most of all, I hurt my childhood best friend.

Conduct: About the same time I began swearing, I changed my "look." I wouldn't saw I was gothic by any means, but I wore an unusual amount of black. I began plastering my face with black eyeliner and using ridiculous amounts of concealer to hide my freckles. I continued to participate in cross-country and track, but I lost all drive in my school work. I treated my classmates like garbage. I began to slouch (which is only important because I was still participating in many dance classes at the time!). I became one of those students that teachers call parents in concern about in a few short months. But the thing I am most ashamed of is the way I destroyed my dearest friends self-esteem just because I wanted to feel superior.

Love: So, I'm swearing and dressing like a wannabe emo. It seems only fitting that two equaling troubled boys would wander my way. I let myself believe I was "in love." I was thirteen turning fourteen and I thought I had the world figured out. Then one of them threatened to hurt himself if I didn't return his affections. When I refused, he kept his word. I was terrified. So I let him go, and moved onto the boy whose locker was right next to mine. I thought he was the "one." How very silly I was. The manipulation began soon after that. I felt like my feelings were betraying me. The final straw was the day he slammed my hand in my locker door. I no longer believed in love. My parents and I fought all the time. My younger brother told me he hated me. I convinced myself that God had abandoned me.

The Change*

Faith: Then everything changed. My parents found out I had been hiding a myspace account full of promiscuous photos of myself. They grounded me. It was not a normal "you're grounded for a week" grounding. I wasn't allowed to use my cell phone, computer, watch tv, and spend any time with my friends. I'm not complaining. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. I was grounded for a total of nine months. During those nine months, my life and my heart changed drastically. I transferred to another school. I meet new friends that accepted my failures and helped me become myself again. Most of all, I found Christ…again. I finally realized that the only thing that could save me from my imperfectness was a perfect and forgiving savior. I spent a lot of time apologizing and trying to regain the trust I had broken. 

Purity: And then, I met the man that would be my husband. Let me tell you, I do not deserve him. He is amazing. When we met, I was still healing from those horrible years and he did not know the Lord. Therein lied the struggle. But, somehow God used those crazy high school days to change both our hearts. When Aaron accepted Christ, I could not help but fall in love so deep that I could never possibly climb out. I won't lie, maintaining our "purity" was the hardest thing I can still imagine to date. He is fine. And the day I walked down the isle, it all became worth it. 

Today, I still cannot perfectly master all these things. But, I believe in a Savior who saved me by grace. I am so very undeserving, but yet He still forgives my every flaw. 

My husband and I have made this verse our goal for two very important reasons. 1) We are a young married couple and want to set a positive example for our loved ones. 2) We strive to achieve speech that glorifies Christ, actions that reflect our commitment to God and to each other, love that lasts, faith that encourages others, and purity of our hearts.

That is why I love this verse.