>A little history lesson

>This post has sparked from pondering how Aaron and I came to be “us”. We are getting back to doing our Bible study on a regular basis and this week the theme was worship. We’re doing a book right now we picked up at Berean some time ago. We got to talking about the outlined questions, of course, and then we started remembering how life was before we were “us”.

I was 17 and finishing up my junior year of high school; Aaron was almost 19 and going to the community college. I had started going to my friend Cassandra’s church a little while before that, maybe six months. Hard to remember. But Aaron and I served on the youth group worship team as singers, and sometimes I would play piano. We also were in a student-led prayer group on Friday nights.

For anyone reading this who was in the prayer group, you know how things went. We were misguided in some things, such as having no real leadership since we were all just kids using the church on Friday nights. We’d get together, maybe seven or eight of us, and Cassandra and/or I would play the baby grand and others would play guitar or djembe. We’d just pray and sing and some awesome things happened as a result of our seeking God. Again, we were misguided on some things and towards the end it got kind of weird, but overall it was good.

A little aside: This is when I learned how to play chords and improvise. I came from a classical background, with scales and arpeggios and Hanon exercises every day. This was a whole new world to me. Cassandra showed me how and because I knew some theory, I caught on pretty fast. It was a great experience for me.

There were a few times when it would just be me and Aaron. We weren’t dating at the time, and we really didn’t know each other all that well. I would play and we would both sing. I remember even writing a few songs during those several months that we sang.

Something grew out of those prayer meetings, and towards the end we all had a retreat in the country at a friend’s parents’ cabin. Guys and girls slept separately but in the morning we had coffee. It had rained like crazy the night before, but I remember specifically that Aaron and I both sat on the porch of this cabin in chairs with our coffee (mine souped up and his black of course) and talked. Like an old married couple.

 

And I knew then that I was going to marry this man. I never told him that I knew that early until much much later (I would have scared the poor boy away!). It wasn’t a big fireworks type of thing, but it just felt right. Like we were just meant to be together, like my life had never not had him in it. Idyllic though it sounds, especially when coming from a seventeen-year-old mind, but I just knew. That was May 9, 2003.

So from then on is history, obviously, as we’re seven years down the road. Through our stages of being friends, then boyfriend/girlfriend, fiancees, and now husband and wife, we’ve tried our best to center our relationship around Christ. It hasn’t been easy. In fact, I’d say it’s harder to commit to Jesus than to just commit to each other and be done with it.

We both knew going into our dating relationship that if at any point it was not headed for marriage, as in we couldn’t agree on something really big, etc, that we should break up. I had told God way before Aaron, but after Keith (his younger brother, now isn’t that ironic?) that the next guy I would date, I would marry. I had dated one person but was just not interested in dating a bunch of people just to “see what’s out there”. Not everyone does it that way, and that’s fine.

I think we’ve always had an idea that our relationship would never be easy. As soon as we’re comfortable with something, God shakes it up. And that’s what we have wanted since the beginning – to do God’s will even if it takes us through hard times. I don’t think I’d rather be comfortable. How boring! We’ve grown so much in the past seven years and learned many hard lessons. I’m thankful for learning them early on, before we’re married for ten years and have 2.5 kids (or a nice round number of three, haha).

We have also strongly felt that we will be called into the mission field full-time someday. That’s where our hearts are. Though we have no idea of when or where, we know it’s there sometime in the future.

 

It’s late and I’m watching my “niece” (my cousin’s daughter.. they call me aunt and I call her niece, haha) all day tomorrow.. should be an adventurous day with a one-year-old! But anyway, I really want to blog about two things: obedience in marriage and submission in marriage and how God has worked through these things in our relationship. I will save those topics for later as it requires more thinking and research. 😉