Finally free.

Been wanting to post this for awhile...

About three years ago, my world began spinning out of control.  After finishing my student teaching in May 2010, I was excited to start my first "real" job as an autism teacher.  In short, this job was not at all what I expected.  Most teachers would agree that the first year of teaching is difficult regardless of the circumstances, and I was prepared for that.  I was not prepared to come home with bruises from being kicked or from dodging desks being thrown at me.  I wasn't prepared to be called horrible names and to be told "I hate you" so many times a day.  I wasn't prepared to be defeated by 5-10 year-olds.

By December, I was crying at the end of every day, getting physically sick on Sunday nights when thinking about going back to work on Monday, and ready to quit.  So I did what any frustrated female teacher would do in such a situation: tried to get pregnant.  

January passed, then February, March, April, and May, and somehow that school year was over.  I told my principal that I would not be returning the following year, even though I was unsure of what I would do next.  And I still wasn't pregnant.  

After about eight months of trying, I decided to go to the doctor.  Everything checked out fine on my end, so I encouraged my husband to go to his doctor.  He went, and the findings for him were not so good.  He would need surgery to correct an issue, and our chances of the surgery working were a toss-up.  We decided to go ahead and try the procedure, and the results left us in a worse situation than before.  

By this time, I had become a very bitter and cynical individual.  I hated my husband for not being able to give me the one thing that I wanted most in the world.  I hated my church because I was involved in so many activities but constantly felt as though I was encouraged to pull myself up by my bootstraps and continue trying to pour from an empty cup. Mostly, though, I hated God because I was breaking and He didn't seem to care.  In fact, I wasn't even sure that He existed.  Every day when I woke up, the whole world felt dark.  

The darkness continued for months and months.  When I look back over those months that turned into years, there are three specific things that God used to rescue me.

The first was when I came to City Pres in April 2012.  I'm not sure what even got me through the doors, to be honest, because by that point, I was crying every time my husband dragged me to church with him. I walked in and sat down on a back pew, arms crossed and heart hard.  Then Doug (the pastor) spoke some of the same words that we hear every week when we first come in.  "Welcome to City Pres.  We're glad you're here.  Some of you may be excited to be here and some may not be.  Wherever you are, we invite you to worship with us.  And if you just need a place to rest, please rest in Christ today."  I remember tears streaming down my face when I heard those words.  Rest.  I had been waiting for someone to tell me it was okay to do that for years.  

The second piece of rescue was Jeremiah 6:16, which I providentially found on my parents' refrigerator when I went home to visit.  "Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls."  Moments of darkness can easily turn into moments of weakness, and I often felt tempted during those months to do crazy things which could ruin my life.  In those moments, I remembered Jeremiah 6:16 and my grandpa, who had truly shown me what it meant to follow the ancient paths when nothing else made sense.  I knew I wanted rest, so I held on to those precious words.

Finally, a story from the Jesus Storybook Bible really rang true to me.  I was hardly reading my bible at all during that time, but this children's book was something I could actually process.  The story is at the very beginning of the book, about Adam and Eve in the garden.  Adam and Eve sinned and ran away from God.  But even in their wandering, God loved them so much that he went and found them.  Maybe I was not lost forever.    

Those three things are unquestionably significant in my story of rescue, but the final straw was when I went to a different doctor in August 2012.  He ran some additional tests, and then the unthinkable happened.  Suddenly, I couldn't hate and blame my husband anymore for not being pregnant.  It was me, too.  I was broken.

In the past months since that gut-wrenching news, God has broken me so that he could make me whole.  I've had surgery, and my issues were corrected, but not before all my pride in myself and my controlling nature were completely shattered.  My love for my husband was restored because I had come to understand his hurt in a very real way.  God took away the things that I wanted the most in order to give me what I needed the most: himself.

Our daughter, Piper Anna, was born on June 28, 2013.  I did not give birth to her in the traditional way.  We adopted our baby girl through an agency here in Oklahoma City.  This is not the way I had imagined my story of rescue ending.  It's better.

Through adoption, I have already seen grace in so many ways that I wouldn't have been able to otherwise.  A huge way is through our many friends and family members.  Adoption is not a cheap or an easy process, yet, because of our community, we have never felt more loved or supported.  I see birth parents differently.  Piper's other mom and dad are true heroes in my book, and I hope that one day our daughter knows how blessed she is to have four parents who love her instead of just two.  And ultimately, as you've probably heard before, adoption is a beautiful picture of what God has done for us as his children. It is incomprehensible to me that, before the foundations of the earth, He chose me to be a part of his family, too, even though there is nothing good in me.  Because of adoption, I feel like I am understanding the vastness of God's love for the first time in my life.

After meeting the birth parents of our daughter, our case worker told us something.  Baby Girl's birth father had a dad who was absent for most of his life.  What Conner does remember of his dad is that he was a very harsh man and a hypocritical Christian.  As you can imagine, Conner's heart has been hardened from years of the misrepresentation of Christianity that he received from his mostly absent father.  As Conner walked out the doors of the agency after meeting us that day, he gave our case worker a huge hug and whispered in her ear, "God knew."      

God knew.  On Conner's end and especially on mine, God has known all along.  Here I stand, two-and-a-half years after my original plan to have children, and my hands are empty of everything I held before.  Nothing is at all how I had predicted, and yet I'm so thankful for this beautiful story by the Author who knows what is best for me.  In the end, I have learned that the perfect job, the perfect church (which, by the way, doesn't exist), and all of the perfect biological or adopted children in the world will not bring me true happiness, because that is always and only found in Christ.  When I look at Piper, I realize that I am finally free.  But the precious gift of my daughter is not my freedom- He is.

"You can have all this world, but give me Jesus."

Rain.

(This post was originally written for my church's blog.  You can find that here.)

It's Wednesday morning, and I'm listening to the rain pour from our rooftop for the third day in a row.  Once again, I've missed my small window of opportunity for an early run, but since a July thunderstorm in Oklahoma is always preferable to the heat, I'm not upset.  The dishes are done, the laundry is washed and folded, lesson plans for tutoring are finished, and my daughter is asleep in her swing.  So I curl up on the couch to listen to the steady rhythm of the drops pitter-pattering on the glass windows, and I thank God for the rain.

When my husband and I first got married four years ago, he prayed for hardships.  He didn't do so because he is glutton for punishment, but because he knew that trials would make us stronger in our faith and in our marriage.  I always hated those prayers, partly because I like my life to be easy, but also because I knew that God would hear my husband...and He would answer.

He did answer, and not at all in the way I wanted.  Had my husband realized what the future held for us as he prayed, he might not have asked for the trials.  We've shed so many tears together in the last three years as we have endured tough jobs, the death of loved ones, and infertility.  The rain has fallen in torrents, and we both have come to the end of ourselves.

I think that's what God intended for us all along- to reach the place where we died, along with our naive hopes and selfish plans, and He was all that was left.

You see, we all forget God on the sunny days.  We expect the sun to rise every morning, yet we fail to thank Him that it does.  When all is well and our lives are filled with blessings, our thoughts begin to turn into, "Look what I've done" and "Everything is going exactly according to my plan."  Then Jesus, in his kindness, sends the rain to remind us that our life is not our own but His.

For the past two days, after the rain has subsided, a rainbow has shone brightly in the sky.  I see it faintly again this morning, and I am reminded of the simple truth that rainbows only come after the rain.  Rain brings the beauty of a rainbow into existence.  Today, as I look at my adopted daughter and work at a job that I love, I am reminded that those things are even more beautiful because of the many days when the sun did not shine.  I've prayed for prosperity, but because He loves me, God sent hardships.  "His blessings have come through raindrops and His healing through tears."  And finally, I'm thankful for that.  He has not let me forget Him.

"The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit." -Psalm 34:18

I got married young.

Today is my fourth wedding anniversary.  Here in Oklahoma and where I'm from in Texas, marrying young really isn't that unusual.  But when I meet people from out-of-state and tell them how long I've been hitched, I get bewildered looks.  "Wow, were you like, 12, when you got married?!"  (It probably doesn't help that I'm 25 and I still look like I'm in high school.)  "Ugh, don't you feel so tied down?"  Some people don't even try to put it delicately.  "I'm sorry, but that is just too young."

Everyone seems to have an opinion about what age is too young for marriage.  I don't think there is a right or wrong age.  (Sometimes 18-year-olds are more mature than 30-year-olds.)  I'm pro-marriage in general, so whether you're young or old, I say go for it. I had just turned 21 when I walked the aisle, and my now-husband was 23.  For us, those were the perfect ages.

We didn't rush into our marriage.  We had dated for three years, and we just knew the time was right.  I'd like to offer a few reasons why, for us, marrying young was the best thing we could have done.

1.  Sex.  In light of our culture today, I realize that our decision to save sex for marriage is rare and probably weird to many, but it was important to us.  And let's be honest, three years is a long stinkin' time to wait for sex.  The solution?  Get married and have as much sex as we wanted.

2.  We knew that we would never really be ready.  There are always more goals to accomplish, more places to travel, and more items to cross off the bucket list.  If we waited until the "right time" to get married, we probably never would have.  There is no "right time."  We didn't throw caution to the wind, but we also knew that we couldn't delay our decision until our uncertainty was 100 percent gone, because that day would never come.

3.  Our commitment to love each other, regardless of the situation, has held us together.  When we were dating, we always had the choice to break up if things weren't going well (and we almost did on multiple occasions!).  Now that we are married and divorce is not an option, we can do nothing but work through trials, arguments, and annoyances.  Because we promised to love, we deal with circumstances as they come instead of allowing those circumstances to break us.

4.  We could have spent forever searching for the perfect person and never found him or her.  I am not naive enough to believe that I am the perfect wife for my husband, and neither is he the perfect husband for me.  We are both seriously flawed.  We fight.  We make each other angry.  He leaves his dirty clothes on the dresser.  I get my shave gel all over the shower.  He doesn't wash his dishes after lunch.  I eat the last piece of cake without asking.  He farts too much.  I fart too much.  Another man might not annoy me in the same ways, but he would annoy me nonetheless.  I didn't marry Andrew because he is the perfect man for me; Andrew is the perfect man for me because I married him.

5.  We do more fun things because we are married, not less.  "Life as we knew it" didn't end when we said "I do;" it truly was just beginning.  We are bumps on logs without each other.  Living together allows us to open up our home to others more often.  Having combined incomes lets us travel more.  We never have to worry about finding dates to weddings, parties, etc.  We shoot guns, see movies, play board games, watch car races, go hiking, run marathons, attend concerts and sporting events, look at Christmas lights, work at camps, hang out at the zoo, and the list goes on.  We do those things because they are more fun with a best friend than alone.  I would never hike in the Wichita Mountains without my guy blazing the trails and warning me about rattlesnakes.

6.  Burdens are cut in half when someone shares them with you.  The last four years have not been without heartache, but Andrew has helped me through everything.  He cannot remove the circumstances, but he can listen and encourage me during them.  My first year of teaching, surgeries, and loss of loved ones have all been easier because my husband has carried part of the load.

7.  We have become more independent because we are married.  This seems counter-intuitive, but hear me out.  There is nothing wrong with living with one's parents or with having roommates, but being married has allowed us to make more decisions on our own than if we had continued with our separate living situations.  "With great power comes great responsibility," but I actually enjoy being able to pay our own bills, own a home, have separate health insurance from my parents, and plan our meals.  We are our own separate family unit, and we wouldn't have it another way.

8.  I'm not the first person to say this, but we get to grow old together and grow up together.  We spent our first year of marriage in a dumpy duplex that backed up to a high school parking lot, we drove an old car with a huge dent in the side, I was still finishing school, and we budgeted like crazy just to make ends meet.  But we were happy.  I guess what I'm trying to say is this: Marriage doesn't require a huge savings account, perfect jobs, or a fancy house.  It requires two people who are committed to making it work.  Our story may look much different in twenty years, but the main characters will always be the same.

I got married at 21, and I have no regrets.