Over the weekend Andrew and I celebrated the first anniversary of our marriage at a lovely little Bed & Breakfast in Hickory, NC. It gave us a cozy room and quiet Saturday to reflect back on where the year has brought us. How much change and challenge and growth. We’ve been stretched and shaped and chiseled down like clay.
It feels as if most of the year was a rollicking experiment in finding goodness. What is good for each of us and both of us together, what is significant, meaningful and real. My marriage with Andrew has somehow contrived this beautiful landing dock, as if in the middle of an ocean, from which I’ve been able to swim out, dive down, and return with marvelous nuggets of the world; dropping them on the dock and the two of us peering over them in wonderment, trying to understand. With grace and encouragement, and much discussion, we keep sifting through all the treasures, saving the ones with value and tossing back the others.
But you know, a year passes quickly. We are still learning to eat and sleep, to keep a clean house and sit down once in a while.
Learning to endure, to excel and focus in the small, mundane. To remain steadfast in hope and joy.
We are learning all the time the unfathomable faithfulness of a gracious and loving God. Learning to trust more and worry less, and to really mean it.
Learning and failing and learning again that it is enough. This, whatever, is just what we need. Holding our great dreams loosely, sensing and praying and mostly, being patient.
In The Message, Romans 12:1-2 says, “So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering.” I believe this has been our heart each day as we rise. Staking all we are and each little, pygmy thing we do before The King, asking help for our unbelief and healing for our cracked spirits, clenching our jaws and hoping like mad we can make something beautiful out of it all. And I would say we’re different now.
But yet, it is clear we’ve only just begun.
Beautiful post, Jane. I love your reflection on the little every day things and the learning to eat and clean and rest and maintain a household (funny how no one really talks about this part of plunging into adult life). Happy Anniversary! I hope it was very special.
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That’s a wonderful quote. On my very best days, they are a sacred offering. I wish I could remember every day.
Jane, I may not be married, but this post is still such an encouragement to me, that when we do things God’s way, they turn out beautifully, even in every small part of our lives.
I love this too: “In The Message, Romans 12:1-2 says, ‘So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering.'”
Married or single, we can all do that. Thank you for this and congratulations on a year of marriage! 🙂
So glad this held truth for you! You are right, God is so faithful no matter where we are in life.
I’m getting married on Saturday, so this post is such a lovely glimpse of what I’m in for. I wrote much of our ceremony, and a theme I kept being drawn towards is the refining of ones self through the process of building a life with another. Certainly no easy task, but rewarding in ways we can’t ever know until we are in the thick of it. Cheers to SO many more years of growth and beauty with your handsome hubster!
Thanks Katie! So, so happy for you and the hilly, wonky adventure ahead 🙂