Celebrating 21 Years
Today, May 17, Anthony and I celebrate our 21st anniversary. Our years together have certainly been varied, but none as starkly different as last year to this year.
2023: Cancun
2024: Cancer
The highest of highs and the lowest of lows. And there is no one else I'd rather journey through the ups and downs of life with!
This man has shown me Jesus through his unconditional, sacrificial love throughout our marriage, but never more so than now. Through the long days of medical questions, unknowns, infusions, and dwindling energy; in the middle of restless nights battling the insomnia of steroids, hot sweats, and chemo side effects; as we've wrestled with major surgery options and the grief and loss of my body changing dramatically, this man has put aside his own preferences, laid down his life for me over and over, looked me in the eye and said, "I will be right here no matter what your body looks like, no matter how little energy you have, no matter what the future holds, because I love YOU. I am yours and you are mine." I can't write this without tears. Who doesn't melt when face to face with love like this?
I’m not trying to paint my husband as perfect. He is simply a man dependent on Jesus. He's tapped into the Power Source. As he is daily loved and nurtured by God, he is able to pour that love out on me, and I gratefully receive and am strengthened by it.
Cancer is not the path either of us would have chosen. But it is refining us, making us richer, our love truer, stronger, more intimate, more grounded in Christ, its source. More than ever, I'm so thankful God has given us to each other as helpers, teammates, counselors, lovers, friends, and partners. I pray we get to grow old together. But this journey is teaching me to simply embrace and celebrate what God has given today. So thank you, Lord, for 21 years!
Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.
"Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh." This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. —Ephesians 5:25-32
This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. —1 John 4:10-12