The Way You Died

“BLUNT FORCE HEAD AND CHEST TRAUMA”

I read the words on the death certificate and tears sting my eyes; I catch my breath. My chest tightens up and the room starts to spin. “So, this is how they will say you died,” I whisper to an empty room.

I can still see how you died. I can still see the look in your caramel-brown eyes as you slid past me and over the edge of the granite cliff. I can still see the dark red blood pouring from the back of your head onto the stone side of the mountain and onto my shoes. I can still see your eyes swollen shut as you bled from your nose and your mouth. I know how you died. It continues to haunt me every night.

 Yet, I must remember how you lived. You lived with so much gusto. You crammed as much living as you possibly could into every moment. Sometimes it annoyed me. “Can’t you just sit still and read a book?” A ridiculous request, I know; but sometimes it was exhausting just watching you live. However, you were an excellent salesman. You sold me on life and love.  We laughed and cried through every quest, always searching for the next adventure. You taught me to be brave. You taught me how to live fully as if every day were my last. But most importantly, you taught me to love—to love God and to love you.

I will miss you as long as I live; yet, I live in hope that one day we will be reunited. God holds me tightly in His ever loving arms as He ever so gently carries me through this nightmare. The ache in my heart is unbearable. My whole being yearns for you. Still, I am thankful—thankful for the years we shared, thankful for the father and husband you were, and thankful for God’s guidance in our marriage.

Yes, you died violently and early. Yet you lived passionately and abundantly. That is what I will commit to memory. That is how I will remember you.

Broken and Blessed

To be loved and love completely is priceless. Life is too short. It can be snuffed out in an instant when you least suspect it. We become complacent in the routine of life and we forget just how precious the people who do life with us are. We tend to take for granted those who trudge along beside us on this journey called life. And then when they are gone we know for certain just how valuable they were.

Love is the essence of life, and if you are fortunate enough to be united with another person in holy matrimony, then you can never neglect the vow to love. Because if—really when—that person is suddenly ripped from your arms by tragedy, you will have wasted two lives. Loving someone completely will provide you solace when life no longer surges through his or her veins.

I have loved and have been loved completely by a man who healed me through that love. I have been content and full to the brim. I have been blessed beyond words by a man who has adored me for nearly 21 years. He has been a devoted husband and father. He has been my life, and I did not take for granted what we had. We had toiled diligently to achieve intimacy forged by faith. I will never forget what I had with Woody and will miss him every day for the rest of my life.

Tragedy did strike our happy home. The bliss I have known, the love and the beauty of a fulfilled marriage, have been ripped from my hands by an incident too terrible for words. However even though I am completely broken, I am still blessed. God gave me the most exquisite gift, one forged through the flames and polished to a golden glow. I will never stop praising the name of the One who allowed me to know what it was to be Woody’s wife. Broken and blessed by the One who blessed me ultimately through His brokenness.

Life is short this side of heaven. However, eternity waits for me and so does the man who gave me just a glimpse of the love and joy I have yet to know there. Thank you, Woody, for being the man God created you to be. And just know you are still loved completely.

Excerpts from My Book

I am busily writing, but not about intimacy in marriage. This time, I am writing to teenage/single young women about how living a life of purity will set the foundation for intimacy in marriage. So, while all my creative juices are working towards that, I will be occasionally posting excerpts from my book Finding Intimacy in Marriage: A Spiritual, Emotional And Physical Journey published by Faith Books & More, copyright 2014. If you have not read my book, then I hope you enjoy these posts. If you have, then please be patient while I work on my next project. I promise I will have new material for the blog once I am finished.

If you are interested in purchasing my book, it can be found on amazon.com or Barnes&Noble.com.

"In our backyard we have fruit trees and grape vines.  Waiting for the fruit to ripen on the branch or the vine is hard during the late days of summer and early days of fall.  However, the tartness of a not quite ripe grape is usually enough to keep me from picking the fruit before its time.  I cannot tell you how many times I have gazed longingly upon a plum-colored grape, bursting with juice and thought, “Now it’s time,” and picked it, only to spit it out in disgust because it just wasn’t ready to be harvested.  We manage to do the same thing with sex.  There it is, hanging on the vine, just ready to be plucked off and enjoyed.  Our greedy fingers grab hold of it, consume it, and then spew it onto the ground, ruining the sweetness of what we might have known had we only waited.  We rob ourselves of the sweetness that comes from the rush of that first kiss or the nerve-tingling excitement of that first embrace.  Physical intimacy before marriage deprives us of the ultimate pleasure of that first bite.

God wants us to enjoy the intimacies of sex within the protective walls of a covenant relationship. Instead, we have traded the perfect for the passing pleasure of the moment and are suffering the consequences. Sex binds people in a way that nothing else can, and it also has the power to break people when it is abused.  That is why God is so clear about sexual immorality and marriage.  There are no gray areas.  This is not one of those “disputable” matters.  God has a plan, and the purpose of that plan is to protect marriages and His covenant relationship with believers.

Many times throughout the Bible, the relationship between the church (believers) and Christ is compared to a marriage.  Isaiah 62:5b says, “as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you.”  In Matthew 25, Jesus told the parable of the ten virgins, comparing His return to the bridegroom. Again, in Mark 2, Jesus refers to Himself as the bridegroom, and one of the clearest descriptions of the church as the bride of Christ is given in Revelation 19.

Paul tells us in Ephesians 5:22-23, that the relationship between Christ and the church is a “profound mystery.”  However, through the covenant of marriage, we can begin to understand that union.  Marriage teaches us how to love unconditionally and how to sacrifice self for the sake of another.  It teaches us respect and commitment.  Through marriage we can begin to understand true intimacy, an internal knowledge, a oneness that can only be experienced within the union of marriage.  By understanding this bond, we can better appreciate the connection we have with Christ and how He sacrificed Himself to bring us into the beautiful relationship we have with our God.  Jesus Christ was the unblemished sacrifice—the only offering pure enough to die in our place and cover us with His righteousness.  The blood of the purest Lamb brought us into covenant relationship. He committed one hundred percent.  We were His only love.  He never courted any other.  He waited until the perfect time, and then He gave all He had to give.  That is to be our model of marriage.

Ask yourself this, what would Jesus’ sacrifice upon the cross mean had He been defiled in any way?  What if He had entered into the covenant relationship with a past full of lust-filled fantasies and sexual impurity?  I am not saying that Jesus wasn’t fully man.  He was, and as a man, He was a sexual being.  He appreciated a beautiful woman just as much as any man does.  However, He never desired a woman in an unhealthy, ungodly fashion.  He never lusted.  If He had given in to any temptation, including impure thoughts, it would have disqualified Him to be the Messiah, the Lamb of God, the perfect sacrifice suitable to die in our place and cover our sins.  Do you see how coming into a covenant relationship defiled can fracture a bond before it is even made?

Satan knows how damaging premarital sex and impurity in thought and action are, more so than we will ever know.  He knows that if marriages lose their value, our relationship with God loses its value.  He knows that if he can attack the first union established by God, all others will fall apart too, including the most important one we have—that with God.  We no longer value purity, holiness, what it means to be consecrated for God’s use; in fact, we really do not even know what these words mean anymore.  They have been redefined and secularized.  Even the word “marriage” has been reinterpreted by our society so many times that we are no longer clear as to what it stands for.  And the attack continues to this day.  Sexual impurity is Satan’s ace in the hole.  He understands what this means; he gets the significance.  Why can’t we?

Premarital sex and impure sexual desires cheapen sex inside of marriage.  The beauty of what God has in store is stolen.  God created sex and the way He planned it is far better than any cheap, X-rated film—better than even the most romantic movie Hollywood can imagine.  It is more pleasurable than the lust-driven, heat-of-the-moment romps portrayed in every soap opera with the perfectly chiseled male and exquisitely beautiful, well-proportioned blonde.  It is finer than the photo shopped, airbrushed images in a magazine.  It is even more exciting than forbidden love because it is not associated with guilt.  There is no bitter aftertaste that stays with you robbing you of the sweetness of true sexual pleasure that satisfies with tenderness rather than tension.  That is how God designed it.  Why are we letting our sex-saturated culture snatch this away from us with its cheap, counterfeit version?  And we wonder why our marriages lack intimacy and are falling apart at record rates?  We have bought into a terrible lie.  The world’s offering to engage in sexual sin has turned physical intimacy into a form of self-indulgent, pleasure seeking entertainment.  The value of love-making has been lost.

The reason our marriages lack physical intimacy is because sex shouldn’t be an act of self-gratification and intense passion the way it is portrayed on television and on the big screen.  It should be a moment of considerate, tender love-making.  There should only be two people involved and not a host of memories clouding the moment and stealing the heart.  When you have had physical encounters with people other than your spouse, it can be difficult to keep your mind in the moment and not fantasize about what it was like when you were single and sex was thrilling.  Love-making may not be “thrilling;” it may be quite comfortable.  There should be a familiarity and ease about it.  It has a different sort of “excitement”; an excitement that is healthy and causes our affections to grow stronger and more sensitive to the needs of our spouse.  That is how God designed it.  And there is something delightful about the lack of intensity."

Patient Love

"Love is patient, love is kind.  It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always hopes, always perseveres.  Love never fails." 1 Cor. 13:4-8a (NIV)

As a wife and mother, I need a daily reminder of what love should look like in our home.  As I read over 1 Corinthians 13, I realize that we are nowhere near hitting the mark on this one.  While I snap at Woody as he disrupts my daily routine with a simple request (hmmm...there goes the "not easily angered" part), I am made painfully aware of the fact that we are struggling to really love each other.  We keep score, we're impatient, our impatience leads to rudeness, and most of the time (truth be told) we're self-seeking.

So how in the world do we learn to love?  Can we love as defined in these few verses?

I must start by looking inward at how I love.  Is the love God loves me with being transferred to the world around me and, most importantly, to my family?  Honestly?  Not so much.  I struggle with the patient part of loving.  And if I dig down deep, I can see that my impatience is rooted in a self-seeking attitude.  I have my ideal life all planned out, and for some reason everyone around me isn't falling into place and taking his or her part seriously.  "What's wrong with you?" I often ponder.  "Didn't you get the script?  This is NOT how I planned it!"

Yes, I'm very self-seeking.  Therefore, I am not really loving as I should be.  If I want love to reign within my home, I must let it reign within my heart first.  One can't teach something he doesn't know how to do himself.

Loving is hard!  It means living for someone or something else.  Who am I living for?  If the answer is "me", what's the point?  What's to be gained in a life lived to benefit one?

I quickly find myself on my knees pleading for help, realizing I can't love honestly and unselfishly without divine help.  Once love is made perfect within me, perhaps then it will be made perfect within my marriage and within my family.

(Just a reminder, if you find that my writings have helped you in anyway, you may want to purchase my book, Finding Intimacy in Marriage: A Spiritual, Emotional and Physical Journey, available on Amazon.com)

Loving Sacrificially

I know it—intellectually; but emotionally?

The heart is slow to follow the head.

Love requires sacrifice…there is no “easy” button. But, we all search for the path of least resistance. We desire committed, soul-satisfying love. We want to be satiated—filled to the brim. However, while searching for this elusive emotion we never stop to question, “What will this require of me? What will I need to give in order to receive?”

Loving fallen man cannot be easy.  Yet Jesus left His home on high, humbled Himself by taking on human flesh, and then died a horrendous death—all in the name of love.

Sacrifice.

Giving when there may be nothing given in return.

When we put aside self, we learn to walk in love. Our hearts must give in order to receive. There is something about the offering that prepares the heart for accepting. Until we learn to give ourselves away—to sacrifice—we cannot understand what it truly means to be loved.

We must empty ourselves in order to be filled. Sacrifice drains the vessel of the heart in order to make room for the soul-satisfying love we all seek.

I know this. Yet, living out this principle daily requires discipline and patience. However, knowing that I am loved sacrificially by the creator of the world inspires me to dedicate my life to learning this principle emotionally as well as I do intellectually.

Waiting...

Waiting.  It seems that the majority of my life has been spent in limbo—waiting to reach adolescence, waiting to legally drive, waiting to vote, and waiting to be loved.  And with each milestone I have reached, I have found another just a little bit further down the road that needed to be attained.  Mountains have been scaled with many a tear shed.  I have shoved past adversity and stared down challenges with much bravado; but beneath it all I have been lonely and frightened, afraid of the shadows that fall at my feet.

When have I waited in hope?  To be quite honest, never; but now I must wait and watch.  Do I know, I mean really know, who or what I am waiting for?  Can I trust the unseen?  Can I trust God?  Questions obstruct my view until I feel as if I am wandering through the darkness with my hands secured tightly behind my back.  There is no way to maneuver through the gloom my mind has created.  Not without God, not without hope.  So, here I wait.

I remember waiting for my dad to die.  Was I hopeful?  Yes and no.  I was torn into a million tiny pieces, scattered throughout a hospital room and down the halls.  I prayed for my dad to die, to be released from the shattered shell of a man he had been and the pain that wracked his body.  Though his death was my prayer, I did not wait in hope but in despair.  Yet, God was there.  I know He heard me.  My expectations were met.  You see, hope is the feeling that what is wanted will happen, a feeling of expectancy.  Many times we desire things to be, but there is no joy in the end result.  Hope is not optimism.  Optimism expects the best outcome or a cheerful result.  Hope fulfilled does not always bring delight.  Hoping my dad would die quickly brought great sorrow, even if it was the desired or best outcome.

And now I wait for my God.  I wait for Him daily to fulfill His purpose in my life.  I wait for Him to speak to my children and for His call on their lives.  The question that comes to my mind is do I wait in anticipation?  Do I believe that what I yearn for will happen?  Do I truly have hope?

“But as for me, I watch I hope for the Lord, I wait for God my Savior; my God will hear me.”  Micah 7:7 NIV

It's In the Little Things

Coming home to find hydrangeas in a vase

Calling first thing in the morning to say, “I love you!”

Holding hands while driving to the store.

Doing another load of laundry after washing all the clothes—just because he needs a few items to take on the road.

Putting him first in my thoughts even though he is hundreds of miles away.

Woody is home six days out of the month if we are lucky. Building intimacy is nearly impossible with an absentee spouse. However, it is all the little things that bind us together—like gentle raindrops falling on my face, providing momentary relief from the sun’s scorching rays. The gentle words, the small gifts, the acts of service—all of these things are so mundane and menial; yet through these things we say “I love you. I value you. I desire you.”

Love isn’t always romance and rockets exploding, but it is always respectful; and we discover it’s true worth in the little things.