This week has been hanging over my head for months now and it has finally arrived. Our annual return to Lake Glenville. The exact place that holds such a special place in our hearts for so many reasons especially since that beautiful day God blessed our lives with our baby girls, Annalise and Emmalyn. I have been so anxious about coming back because I knew that this would be such a tender time in our lives. As I sit here tonight and type this out I am almost ashamed that I worried so over this, because I should have known all along how tenderly God would hold us. I cried many tears before we left our house for this trip, some behind my sunglasses in the car on the way and some since we arrived, but I am confident that they all have been seen and felt. Faithful He has continued to be.
This is what the LORD, the God of your father David, says:
I have heard your prayer and seen your tears.
2 Kings 20:5
Record my misery; list my tears on your scroll — are they not in your record?
Today is a very tender day as it has significant meaning for two very different reasons. It is a day that my husband and I should receive feel such joy as we celebrate our wedding anniversary, but this year will also be recognized as the seven month mark of losing our daughters. So unfair that this day should have to be shared. I pray that as the sun rises in the morning that through great sadness God will shine His perfect light. I so want to honor my husband today.
Today I want to remember the day I first saw him. The day I knew I wanted to marry him. The day that he asked me to marry him. The day we said I do. The first time he brought me to this place at the lake I have grown to love so dearly. Our first house. Our first move. Our first kiss. The look in his eyes when he looks at our children. The look in his eyes when he looks at me. The laughter in his voice when only the two of us get the joke. The relief in his breath when work is not a stressor. The dreams that we dream together.
I want him to know all the things that I love about him:
The fact that he is a great husband all the time
A great father (even when my heart races because I feel he is being to hard or protective and the way
it steams when I feel he is being a push over)
A hard worker, way harder than we need him to be
I love the way he looks in a suit (which I get to see almost every day), I love the way he always smells like his cologne (even after he cuts the grass), and after all these years I have even learned to love his snoring (because if I can hear it, it means he's there).
So tonight, when I should be sleeping, I am sitting here at the lake by a dim lamp in the living room at Tranquility Cottage. It is 58 degrees outside and the only light outside other that my lamp is the glow on the water from the moon. The crickets are chirping in the distance and two of my children are sleeping peacefully in the same room because they chose to, not because we make them. The stars are always out and if I look up at the sky long enough it feels like I could reach right into Heaven which I would love to do right now. But God's plan is different and so I sit here, knowing I am not alone, while I can hear my husband snoring in the background. The man that is the father to all four of my children. My help mate and friend. The love of my life.
