15

I'm writing this post for my wife. This year is our fifteenth anniversary and I have no idea how it's already been fifteen years. Our tenth anniversary was ruined by corona, so I'm trying to make our fifteenth as special as I can. The term "my wife" is one that at a certain point in my life I didn't think I'd have the opportunity to speak. I remember the night that I said I was going to  give eHarmony one more shot and if I don't find anyone, then I'm just going to figure a way to live my life as a single man. A few days later, I remember opening the site and seeing that I had matched with this particularly beautiful woman. The first line of her bio said "I love Jesus and college football". My first thought was this has got to be too good to be true. So I proceeded to do whatever I needed to to begin a conversation with her. I knew very quickly that I needed to figure out a way to not screw this up because I was smitten already. Admittedly, I moved very slowly. I had to work some things out from a previous relationship and make sure I didn't carry any baggage into whatever this was going to be. I hate talking on the phone. To this day, I hate it. I loved talking to Christa. I would sit and just talk to her for a very long time. She was sending very clear signals that she wanted to meet. I did not receive those signals. Christa was very patient with me. She is still patient with me, for the most part. From the time that we started talking until the time that I finally asked her to go on a date with me was about two months, maybe even three. We met at the Carlsbad Tavern, and I fell in love. It was easy. Not too long after that, we became serious. The sweetest thing about Christa is she is very easy to love. My relationship with her has never been hard. I don't even know if we've ever really had big arguments about anything. We were both 35 so the timeline may seem a little rushed, but within 10 months of our first date, I had asked her parents for their blessing to ask her to marry me. The conversation with them wasn't awkward at all having only met them two weeks prior to asking them if I could marry her. She kept me a secret from her family for a long time before meeting any of them. I still remember bein at Greasewood Flats to celebrate her birthday and her Mom sidling up to me at a table and asking me who I am and how long Christa and I had been dating. Sidenote here. I have the best in laws. I have friends that tell me nightmare scenarios about their relationships with their in laws. Jerry and Mary have been nothing but welcoming and warm to not only me, but to my family as well. I have no complaints about mine. Back to the point, we got engaged after a George Strait concert one night. Eight months later surrounded by all of the people we love, we were married. It's been 15 years now. We have two sons. We've walked through very tough times together. Christa is an incredible Mom and our boys are going to be good men because of how she loves them and is shaping them. If I had written a checklist of everything that I could possibly imagine in what I wanted in a wife, Christa blows all of those expectations out of the water. Proverbs 18:22 says, He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord. All of the prayers in prayed when I was in my deepest, darkest loneliness were answered when Christa said I do. I don't know if you truly understand the hopelessness I felt for a really long time thinking that I was going to spend the rest of my life alone. There were some dark times. And then this light came in the form of my wife. She is a miracle. I tear up thinking about it all the time. God not only answered all of those prayers, He answered them so specifically and so beautifully, I don't know if I have the words to write to explain to you my gratitude for her. I wanted to write this today to tell you and her, just how much she means to me. And in going back and reading what I've already wrote, I'm not sure if I've done an adequate job in telling you of my appreciation for her. For all of her tangible qualities, there are many more intangible qualities that still draw me to her today. Her compassion, her drive, her gift of hospitality, her wisdom, her vulnerability, her trustworthiness, her understanding, her ability to be friends with just about anyone, the way she loves me, all of these things and so many more, make me appreciate her. Christa's love language is acts of service. More than anything I can buy for her, the thing that she loves is when I do something for her without her having to ask me to. I try to anticipate meeting her needs. I hope she knows that I love making her life a little bit easier. So Baby these fifteen years have been a direct answer to prayers that I prayed thirty years ago. Thank you for marrying me. Thank you for loving me. Thank you for our two babies. You are truly the best gift that I have ever received aside from salvation. I love you.