I Will...

In days of old, God's people built altars to acknowledge and to remember the places where He had performed a miracle, or had saved them, or had revealed Himself to them in a significant moment. 

Twenty years ago yesterday, my husband and I recited our wedding vows at an altar in the church of my childhood. This specific altar represented not only the heritage of my faith, but also the miracle of the moment when that heritage became the beginning of my own legacy, as I made the choice to have a relationship with Jesus because I desired to, rather than because my family told me to.

Throughout the day yesterday, I found myself contemplating the marriage vows I had made at that altar, the same altar where the cornerstone of my faith had been laid. 

Will you take this man to be your husband... Will you love him, respect him, defend him, honor him... Will you keep him in sickness and in health... Will you seek his joy and share his burden... Will you cherish him with a womanly love and affection... Will you seek to understand him and support his faith with your own faith in Christ?

It is apparent to me in my reflection of our wedding ceremony, that while I repeated the words contained in those vows with the utmost sincerity and a heart overflowing with love for the man whom I spoke them to, my inexperience and naivete shielded me from the truth of what honoring my vows would require of me. 

I look back at myself as a young woman contemplating marriage to the man who held my heart in his hands, and I can see that I had formed a sparkly ideal of what our life together would be like. I was bold in my determination of how our plans would unfold. I believed our choices and our love would lead us to the perfect fruition of the dream my six-year-old self had imagined back when I had pretended that my Grandma's filmy scarf was a wedding veil and that my little cousin was my attentive bridesmaid carrying a basket of torn paper "rose petals". At age twenty-three, I did not have the wisdom or experience to know that it was not our plans that should have been the focus of the marriage relationship, but rather a willingness to be obedient to God's plans. I did not foresee that often in the next two decades, our choices would lead us to places far away from perfection. I did not understand the truth that no matter how much love for this person seemed to exude out of my every pore as a seventeen-year-old girl, and even more so as a young newlywed, love would not always be so obvious in the face of real life "stuff".

Today, when I read the vows we made on our wedding day, it is with the addendum of ancillary notes and thoughts scribbled in the margins of my mind:

Will you take this man... 

this one right here in front of you, as well as the one he will grow to be as he faces continual changes and struggles and is molded a bit more each day, each month, each year into the person God intentionally created him to become. 

Will you love and respect him... 

and discover the very important lesson that, for him, the word "love" is contained within the word "respect", and that he would choose the latter over the former, were he asked to make that choice?

Will you defend him and honor him... 

even when that means defending him from yourself, from your own emotional ups and downs, from the moments when you think you need and deserve to be selfish and get caught up in having your own way prevail... even when choosing to honor him means walking with him in a direction that you may not have chosen for yourself?

Will you keep him in sickness and in health...

learning to understand that "keep" means to remain, to stay, to care for... not settling for merely tolerating the circumstances, but instead choosing to thrive in the midst of them even when sick days stop being the exception and instead become the norm? 

Will you seek your husband's joy...

even during the seasons when the treasure of it can only be discovered in small moments that are achingly transient... even when those moments overwhelm you with a nostalgic longing for what had seemed so beautifully effortless to the people you both once were?

Will you carry his burden...

Will you carry his burden to Jesus when the weight of it is too much for either of you to bear on your own? Will you be a part of the sustenance which God has promised to provide? Will you support and encourage him to not give up, to lean on Jesus in order find the hope to live courageously? Will you trust God as He purposes to cultivate a spiritual strength in both of you, and allows in your lives the miraculous paradox of burden ripening into the fruit called blessing?           

Will you cherish him with a womanly love and affection... 

even on the days when you would rather run and hide... even when that means simply being grateful for his hand to hold and shoulder to lean against as you sit and silently contemplate the challenges tomorrow will bring?

Will you seek to understand him and support his faith with your own faith in Christ... 
choosing to have compassion for him when all you want to do is close your eyes and cry for yourself... choosing to believe that all things - ALL things, truly do work for good in the plans that God has for your lives... choosing to believe that the rain and the clouds and the valleys and even the desert journey has a purpose... choosing to trust that this path will lead to the perfect fruition of a portrait that at this moment in time, you cannot even fathom in your imagination?

Twenty years later, as I ponder these vows made with idyllic innocence and wholehearted faith, I realize that my marriage itself has become an altar: a place where God has performed many miracles, a place where He has saved me from my own selfish inclinations, a place where He has revealed Himself to me over and over and over again, a place where I have learned to trust Him with every detail of my life - to trust Him enough to view the past with triumph, to live today with gratefulness, and to step forward into tomorrow with a promise to persevere in the waiting as two words flow in an abiding whisper from my lips... I will.

I Will Love You

by
Daniel Haughia

As long as I can dream, as long as I can think, 
as long as I have a memory, 
I will love you.

As long as I have eyes to see, and ears to hear, 
and lips to speak, 
I will love you.

As long as I have a heart to feel, a soul stirring within me, 
an imagination to hold you, 
I will love you.

As long as there is time, as long as there is love, as long as there is you, 
and as long as I have a breath  to speak your name,
I will love you...

because I love you more than anything in all the world.


Cast your cares on the Lord and he will sustain you,
 he will never let the righteous be shaken.
Psalm 55:22 NIV

And we know that God causes everything work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.
Romans 8:28 NLT

Carry each other's burdens, and in this way obey the law of Christ.
Galatians 6:2 NIV

Wives, understand and support your husbands in ways that show your support for Christ.
Ephesians 5:22 MSG

I pray that God, the source of hope, will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in him. Then you will overflow with confident hope through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Romans 15:13 NLT

David built an altar there to the Lord and sacrificed burnt offerings and peace offerings.
And the Lord answered his prayer...
2 Samuel 24:25a NLT

I will send you the seasonal rains. The land will then yield its crops,
and the trees of the field will produce their fruit.
Leviticus 26:4 NLT