Our Marriage is Mending

To our dear readers, I'm so sorry that I have been so silent lately. Between preparing for Zhenya's wedding and a computer dilemma that has kept me from being able to export photos from Lightroom 5 (my photo editing software), I've been so long in posting.

This will be a quick post, but now that my wonderful, incredible man has solved my technology problem I'll be posting again.

Here's that man who is the love of my life. God has been so kind to grant us nearly 32 years together. We love the rare opportunities we get to travel alone. We love our little "just us" adventures. Truly, our entire marriage has been an unbelievable adventure. Someday I'd love to write the biography of our union. It's been a wild ride! I just can't believe the twists and turns that we never would have written into our own story had we been the authors. And, yet, through it all God has been our strength. He has made the journey beautiful...even in our ugly moments. He has showered our marriage with grace.

This weekend we went road tripping on a quick business trip. Our journey took us through one of my favorite places in this beautiful nation -- the small town of Galena, Illinois. Many of the buildings date back to the Civil War era in the 1860s.

The detail in these old buildings takes my breath away.

Here's the front of the building pictured above. Is this not amazing?

On this particular quick visit to this small town full of restaurants and shops, the doorknobs caught this photographer's eye.

I thank God that after a very rough three years or so, the Lord has opened the door to profound sweetness in our marriage again. The secret? We finally each got humble. We stopped slamming our one-flesh-life-partner with, "I deserve better from you". God lifted the mirror of His word and showed each of us just how selfish and self-focused we'd become as the daily-ness of life slowly heated up. We each started to look at "self" as the source of trouble, and stopped pointing the finger at each other. Only humility and brokenness over our own sin could heal our marriage. We thank God that we're passionately, wildly in love with one another again.

I feel like a newlywed all over again! Did I mention how crazy I am about my man???