My Wife is Annoying sometimes…

Pull me a little closer
Take me a little deeper
I want to know Your heart
‘Cause Your love is so much sweeter
Than anything I’ve tasted
I want to know Your heart
–Closer Amanda Cook

Talking to my wife is annoying sometimes.

I can’t count anymore the times where I have been pondering an idea in my mind for a really long time, like abnormally long.  I think that if I just put more energy into an idea, a thought, a problem, an issue in my life, I will eventually figure it out.  It should be logical right?

Then, with a little thought and a lot of listening, Sheri will say something like, “Well, have you thought about it like ______?”  It does not matter what it is, she has an annoying habit of being right.  Not in her mind.  Not that I am pushover.  The woman is just freaking brilliant sometimes.  I don’t know how she does it, but it has changed me in so many ways.

Not just mentally either.

When we were about to get married, I got all responsible.  I leased an apartment and landed a full time job right out of college.  In said apartment, I crammed all my wordly belongings which consisted of a bed, some night stands, a dresser and clothes in my bedroom.  In the rest of the place, I crammed a camping chair on one wall, a 19 inch tv on the opposite wall and two sets of silverware and random dishes.  All of that in 1000 square feet.  I know, I know, pretty impressive.

When Sheri would stop by, I, being the gentleman I am, gave her the chair.  I sat on the floor.

Then we got married.

My apartment exploded with colors, shapes, soft things, dish soap, a table, art, flowers, books, a couch, wall hangings and good smells.

Everything changed.  And it still changes…

My house is filled with laughter and pain and diapers and songs.  There are sick kids, battles of wills (my daughter is 3), and general chaos a lot of the time, but there is also things like music in this house all the time.  I go to other people’s house sometimes and am like, “Where is all the singing?”  Because I get to live in near constant music.  I just sat down from singing with my 3 year old before she goes to bed, and it hit me, my life is so much better now.  And it is all because of the loves that God has drenched my home with, and I don’t thank Him nearly enough for it.

I walk in after youth group or drive to school in the morning and it just overwhelms me at times of how everything has changed because of God and His Love.  Like how my daughter and I rock in the recliner at night and then she does that thing that makes me shed a tear each time when she leans in and gives that one sigh that only happens when she completely relaxes into my arms.  Or when Jack Jack wobbles around the house and sees me lying on the floor and with a squeal, runs up, burying his head into my neck with sheer delight.  Or when I watch my wife sing, but then she closes her eyes and does that thing where suddenly everyone can feel the song has stopped being words and become a strain of the joy and pain in her heart lifted to a God that cries over it all.

Words just are not enough for some blessings.

I don’t know what to do with things like that.  I just thank God that He let me live that moment.  That in some upside down economy, I was deemed worthy to have earned a blessing that no good deed I have ever even thought of doing would have deserved.

Which makes me believe in God so much.

Because, when you boil it all down, all stories point to one story.

Because, every good thing in my life that has ever been, has been like a glimpse of another world (I can’t remember the book of C.S. Lewis that this idea came from).  It is like something that I can’t describe.  How do you talk about a Love that has been the driving force for thousands of songs and been the Hope of a massive cloud of people that threw down everything because nothing compared to it.  Like a pearl in a field, once you find It, you’re done.  Because there is nothing that tops the Top.

Like helping those that can never pay you back.

Walks in the woods at winter camp.

Listening to little kids sing songs about Jesus.

Watching lives change.

Glimpses which inspire more glimpses.  As if I am given colors and told to paint, but then just holding the color in my hands.  It is okay, but it was not meant for that.  It was meant to be splashed and thought out and transformed into a greater idea than the sum of it’s parts.  It was meant to explode onto the world and point to something greater.  To give a glimpse of what is really out there.

Which may make it sound like I know what I am doing, yet, last week I almost quit this whole thing, the whole blog because I was too afraid of this!  It is a blog, that last sentence sounds ridiculous.  But I am finding out too much about me and love and God and It scares me enough to want to scrap the whole thing because I am afraid that the things I feel are more real than I understand.  That there are more colors that need exploring and I need to paint.  That the things I feel are less facts and more like strange prophecies that are whispered by a God that has taken this life and blessed it with pain/hurt/mud/sweat/life and also with love/joy/children/a wife/family/music.  A God that is changing everything because that is what Real Love has to do.  It has to take you deeper into what we are each meant be all along.

Love has to advance the story

Not because it must,

Because it sees the end and cannot wait for us to see it too.