The Cowboy and I just might have come from two different worlds.
He likes beer, I like tea.
He's crazy chipper in the morning, I need at least an hour to come up with something nice to say.
He feels close to God when he's alone out in the farm field, shooting his gun. I feel close to God when I have a good book, some paper, and a pretty pen.
He likes spicy, I like bland.
I like salad, he likes meat.
He's social, I'm most content in the four walls of this lovely farmhouse.
He's a logical, simple-minded man. I'm a complicated, emotional woman.
Yet, somehow, he's still the one who makes me laugh the hardest.
It took me the first ten years to get comfortable with "us" and the dance of our days as husband and wife.
He walks faster than me, we're not big hand-holders, and unfortunately for me, he's not a mind-reader.
He loves to love on me, but sometimes he needs me to give him some specifics.
We're twelve years into marriage and just last week he still had to remind me,
"If you need help, just ask."
For years I tried to explain how much I just wanted him to already "know".
And for years he tried to gently convince me, that that was never going to happen.
So we've learned to swing back and forth. Sometimes I sway his way, sometimes he sways mine.
He graciously eats what ever I make him, I've just learned to keep a stash of hot sauce and chile peppers in the pantry and have taught my heart to not choose bitterness when bitterness is completely unnecessary.
Much to my gratitude, he's never succumbed to becoming an emotional-sensitive type, simply to appease my heart. He's taught me that husbands are for speaking truth, and godly-girlfriend's are for translating that truth.
He's shown me that no matter how you choose to spend time alone with the Lord, the evidence of it comes out in your life. And so, although the Cowboy could care less about books and pretty pens, his life testifies of his time alone with his Jesus. My insistent days of trying to make him more like me, are over. And I can't even tell you how grateful I am for that.
He encourages me to be bold, I encourage him to rest every once in awhile.
I've been thinking upon it lately, how him and I have been growing up together since we were twelve. Thinking about the ways that his love has been molding me all throughout these years. How I was once to him a friend that happened to be a girl, and now I am the woman who daily holds his heart in my hand.
Twenty years have passed since that one Sunday in June when my friend introduced me to him as her very first boy friend. Thank goodness junior high relationships don't usually last much longer than a week. :)
Today the Cowboy is testing for a possible new season in our lives. Sometimes the thought of change brings fear into my mind. And I know it's the enemy creeping in to destroy God's glory. But that stinkin enemy forgets that God is greater than my heart and that He has graciously put treasure friends into my life, friends who have no trouble translating the truth that the Cowboy has spoken into me, words spoken in a firm but gentle word.
One such friend sent this in a text.
"Two are better than one,
because they have a good return for their labor:
If either of them falls down,
one can help the other up.
But pity anyone who falls
and has no one to help them up.
Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm.
But how can one keep warm alone?
Though one may be overpowered,
two can defend themselves.
A cord of three strands is not quickly broken." (Ecclesiastes 4:9-12)
And as I slid my finger across the words I was reminded that that's it. The three-fold strand is what makes the Cowboy and I whole. Yes, two is better than one, but three is best of all.
Like He once said when he was speaking the universe into place, what the Cowboy and I have going on, it is good. (Genesis 1:31)
He (The LORD) is what makes the Cowboy and I good with one another.
Him and only Him.
He is trustworthy.
And oh how sweet that truth is to my soul! :)
The Cowboy and I, although we are like night and day... we have found that the messy-beauty of it all, it is what makes our love great.
So thankful for you Love. And so proud of you today. :)
