Dear Mark, As I look over at you from the passenger’s seat of the van on our latest adventure, I can’t help but wonder where has the time gone. It brings me back to preparing for my first road trip with you. My parents had sat me down and asked me if I was interested in going to LIFE 2007 with the Wiggins. Your parents had offered to drive me from Toledo, Ohio to Orlando, Florida with you and your sister. The five-day youth event would take us two weeks, because we’d be stopping to visit with your extended family in Georgia both ways where I’d get to meet your grandpa and grandma as well as aunts, uncles, and cousins. I definitely had liked you; we had exchanged emails and even seen each other at youth events from time-to-time, but two weeks? I wrote in my journal to God that if I still liked you and wasn’t annoyed with you after two weeks of constant contact with you, then you must be the one. Classic 15-year-old girl, yes, but here we are! It's 11 years later, two boys in the back seat and you jamming out to the latest Hillsong Young and Free album. The next memories I’m brought to is the countless trips of you either coming to pick me – your girlfriend – up or drop me off back at my home – a two-hour trip. I remember the butterflies of sitting so close to you and finally getting to see you in person after weeks or months of chatting within our timed restrictions on the phone or over instant messenger on the computer – that dates us a bit ;) We would chat about everything and anything, have inside silly jokes about raisin cakes, dance to loud music, and I’d kiss your cheek every time you’d use your turn signal.
While it's seven years later and road trips may look differently, I still love holding your hand, waiting anxiously to see what fun conversation and discussion we’ll have, and I would be willing to start rewarding for turn signals again if need be! Apparently, each year of marriage has a specific symbol and this year it’s wool and copper. I could go the cheesy route and say that you make me warm, but we both know that I’m the heat box when we sleep ;) Marriage has been the greatest adventure I’ve ever started on with so many twists and turns. It’s brought the highest moments of joys and the lowest lows of sorrow. I can say that I have personally learned how selfish, cruel, and disrespectful that I can be and yet here you are, currently giggling and smiling at me as you reach behind you to grab Deacon’s foot. You are my copper. You take on all of my emotions, all of my fears, and help conduct them and point me to the Lord. You are unbelievably and wonderfully durable, being able to be stretched so thin and yet you aren’t brittle or losing your toughness. Now to the wool. I can only imagine that wool isn’t the most comfortable object. It sounds itchy, but in time, it is turned from it’s raw wool into the oh-so-soft and smooth woolen thread. This relates to our marriage in that you take my rough places and by Christ’s help, smooth them out. This role can’t be always easy and for that I will forever be grateful. I’m sure I could go into how God has weaved us together this last year and how much we’ve grown but that might just be a bit too cheesy again! What I can say is that I don’t know what this year ahead will bring but I pray that at the end of it, we’ll look back and know all the more that God is in control. Ephesians 5:25 says, “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” What a hard role and yet one that I feel like you do so well – I think sometimes that giving your life literally up would be way easier than the day-to-day ways that you live by example and die to your own desires. Thank you for endlessly working to love and provide for me. Thank you for being the first to apologize after an argument. Thank you for reminding me that we are still learning. Thank you for getting up with the boys at night. Thank you for introducing me to Chipotle and their heavenly burritos. Thank you for making me laugh, relax, and enjoy life! You are my one and only, my always and forever and I love you so, Lindsay
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