Glimpses

going to try to sum up an impossibility...

Three things happened last week that I feel called to share with you. Two of them are seemingly small things that I think will have an impact on your faith. But one of them feels bigger and all encompassing… nothing short of miraculous. So I’ll start there. (All three though have stuck in my head and my heart as things that need a permanent place to be remembered so expect a couple more posts this week if the kiddos will let me. Ha!)

So the big thing… it’s CRAZY!! It’s impossible. If you read my book, if you know our life story… It feels like a modern-day miracle…

My husband, Jay, became a Pastor at our church!! (Not the preaching on Sunday, head-honcho type, more of the Associate Pastor brand… but, still!)

You guys, I can’t even begin to tell you what an incredible thing this process has been to witness. Not because of the classes and the papers and the scripture he’s been studying, but because of the transformation I’ve been seeing in his faith. The courageous leader he’s becoming, the foundation that he’s been standing on becoming more and more sturdy with every passing year. When I first met Jay, I was 19. He was 20. And I was dating one of his best friend (who became my first husband).

If you’ve read my book, you know that I judged not only the lifestyle Jay lived but the person he was. I did not like the way this guy was living his life and I wanted nothing to do with him.

When my then-boyfriend (Nick) and I got engaged and he told me he wanted Jay to be one of the groomsmen, I visibly cringed before asking him to change his mind. Nick had refused. What I saw in Jay as a horrible influence, Nick saw as an opportunity for God to move. Nick had told me then that he knew God had big plans for his friend’s future. I scoffed, audibly. I didn’t believe him… in reality, I didn’t think God could. I didn’t think God was big enough for change that, to me, seemed as gigantic as that.

I liked to think I believed in the God of the impossible, but even now I’m learning just how limited my faith has been. God is absolutely unequivocally unstoppable. And if He wants to move in a person’s life and that person opens their heart to the possibilities and love He offers, He can do so much more than we could ever have thought to ask or ever hoped to imagine.

Six years later, I walked Nick, my husband, Home. Figuratively really. Because he didn’t walk much those last weeks. But, I was with him when he was first diagnosed, through every cancer treatment and until he took his last breath. He died in my arms in the master bedroom of our first house when our daughter was just 9-months-old.

Nick said a number of things in his short life on earth that proved to consist of great wisdom. Wisdom not just beyond his years, but beyond his life. Things that couldn’t and wouldn’t come to pass until he was gone from this earth. That kind of wisdom can have only been God-given. And the longer I live, the more I feel like God is continuing to reveal to me just how BIG and powerful His “magic” is. Just how awesome His ways are.

Often these realizations render me speechless. And typing the words out seems to be the only way for me to process a small part of the majesty I see.

Never in a million years did I think Jay would surrender his life to God and accept Jesus into His heart. Never in a million years did I think I would one day MARRY this man that I used to tell my husband he shouldn’t be friends with. And NEVER in a million years did I think I would hear people calling him Pastor on a Sunday.

I cry when I think back over the years we’ve had together, Jay and I. Seven years we’ve been together, for almost six of those years we’ve been married, and the whole time we have been learning to love each other, to see the good in each other, and trying to figure out this parenting thing together as we raise our four babies as best as we can (a job that’s way harder than I could have ever imagined…).

But, the greatest thing about these last seven years, has been God surprising me over and over again, with a sweeter second chapter than the old me would have EVER thought possible.

Jay, no matter what the future holds and whether or not you stick with a vocation in ministry, I want you to know… You’ve always been a miracle to me. You are a treasure to our children. And I want to thank you for opening your heart and mind up enough to be a vessel for our God.

He works in mysterious ways. And I CANNOT wait to see what’s next!!