fifteen

To the world:

Fifteen years Mer and I have been married (as of March 14). We have known each other for over 20 years and have been together for around 19 years. I love her very much and hope that someday she will fully understand how I love her. I also hope that someday I will fully understand how much her love for me is.

Fifteen years ago we promised each other things about how we will relate and live with each other. Over the time I know have broken some of my promises, but my faithful wife has still loved me, forgiven me and accepted me. Why? Because of her devotion to Jesus. She is the kind of person that genuinely loves people and can trust that Jesus can still change them. And my children and I get to be some of the first recipients of that love.

She is a great teacher as she teaches our children at home. She has even increased in her wisdom a lot, just by doing the prep work for teaching the kids.

One of her ministries at church is to help oversee the children's ministries and she does an excellent job at that! She has helped quite a few kids to believe the Good News that Jesus provides.

She is my attractive wife and takes care of many of my needs in a variety of ways. (From meals to clean clothes to a maintained house to all of the little details that I would severly overlook).

Our future desire is to work together and hopefully open up a coffee shop so that we can do connect with others while working , for the purpose of sharing Jesus with others.

One of our neighbors told her "well I hope you have 15 more years togeher". In my mind I was thinking, "Whatever! How about way more than that!" Though I treasure times when the whole family is out of the house and I get to play like Tom Cruise in Risky Business and run around the house in my underwear dancing to old music (and they thought I was studying!), I could not imagin my life without my Mer near me. She means a lot to me and I know I don't share how much she means to me.

We are still learning quite a bit about what it means to be married to another broken person. We are also learning significant thngs about parenting and all the things we do right and wrong about it.

As we continue to live the rest of our life together, we will continue to trust in the One who created marriage and gave it a deep meaning.