Three years ago, our lives changed forever as the Lord gave me the strength and confidence in my heavenly Father to take the important necessary steps to leave a domestic violence marriage and follow God as He led us to safety across the state to begin a new life completely trusting in Him alone. Josh was five at the time and little Michael was just 4 months old. With God's protection and direction we began a new life together...just the three of us and God.
At that time...all I knew was that God was my all...and that He knew the path that I would take. I never thought my life would involve more than a life as a single mom dedicated to raising my two boys with God as my love and provider. After a year of counseling, living in hiding, divorce and starting life fresh as a little family of our own...God began sharing with me that He has something more in mind. He wanted me to love again...to dream again...to have a second chance at life with a godly husband and father for my boys.
I didn't see how that would happen...I was over forty with two small children. I was more in love with the Lord than ever and content to live life with Him as my leader, love, and parenting partner. But He has something else in mind. Something better than I ever imagined.
Before Will stepped into my life, I couldn't imagine pulling up our little roots and moving across the state to begin life as a family with an amazing, godly husband and father for Josh and Michael...and to dream of having a daughter as the icing on the cake.
But in May of 2009, God introduced Will and I. Both of us were depending on God to take the lead and show us the direction He had in mind because we were not planning on beginning a relationship. However, before I knew it, Will was courting me...meeting my boys...and falling in love with me and Josh and Michael as well. We had a long distance courtship with many road trips and visits with his daughter, parents and siblings.
He would call me daily when we were apart and we would talk and pray and dream and share with one another our stories of where we had been...and dream and pray about where we were going together.
The moment that little Michael, at just sixteen months old, laid eyes on Will in person he reached out to him with open arms and squeals of "Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!" (This was the first time he had ever called anyone Daddy or ever said the word.) And he has never stopped.
Will is the kind of man that I always dreamed of having as a husband and father for my children.
A man who is totally in love with the Lord and treasures his time praying, reading and studying God's Word. While he was courting me, he would call me and share what God was teaching him through His Word that day and I would share what I was learning as well. Now that we are married (as of April 2010), I look forward to hearing how God is speaking to him each day as we share about what God is doing in our lives throughout our days.
Will's commitment to spending time with the Lord everyday has a huge, life altering impact on our family. Michael and Josh are growing to have the same excitement and desire to spend time in God's Word. They were used to seeing Mommy reading her Bible and praying but the impact that having a father so in love with God and excited about following Him even on the tough days...is powerful stuff!
His love of God and deep desire to grow closer to Him everyday is so catching! His example challenges me to keep my relationship with God first in my life. On days when I get wrapped up in the details of life, I walk upstairs to his home office and see him absorbing every word of His morning Bible time. He takes the time to stop what he is doing and listen, encourage and share with me how God is challenging him to grow that day touches me deeply and reminds me that God is so much bigger than anything I am dealing with that day.
Over the past several months, Will has been dealing with the new challenge of a seizure disorder. His whole life has been turned upside down. He is no longer able to drive, until he has been seizure free for at least six months. He had to give up his IPod Touch due to light sensitivity seizures. He has also had to limit his computer time each day for the same reason. He doesn't have the energy that he used to and although there were moments when he was angry and frustrated in the beginning...he never walked away from God. Instead he fell on his knees and cried out to him from deep in his soul and asked God to help him to become a better man, husband, and father through all of this.
He has shared with me how much he has grown as he has had to surrender so many things to the Lord in all of these challenges. I am in awe as I see his relationship with God grow deeper because of them as well.
Watching him grow and surrender has moved me to a new level of surrender in my own walk with the Lord. God has taken this scary health challenge and turned it into a beautiful opportunity to grow closer to Him as we depend more and more on Him each day.
Our children watch this journey and their love for God's Word is deepening as well. Josh LOVES to spend time reading his Bible and Michael has a new little Bible now and begs for us to read Him stories about Jesus everyday. They both take their Bibles to bed with them. Our daughter, Annie, leans on Him more and more each day and discussion of God's Word and praying together is common in daily life in our home.
I am overwhelmed with gratitude for this man who leads our family in the dance with God's amazing strength and grace at the foot of the Cross. Happy Father's Day, Honey!
Question: How does your husband bless you?
Question: How does your husband bless you?
Dancing together at the foot of the Cross,
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