12 Blessed Years of Marriage!

I cried for a while yesterday thinking of the past 12 years.  We have gone through some trials that maybe couples don't even experience until many years into their marriage.  I thought of the wonderful husband I have and his deep love for me.  Even though for the first part of our marriage, he had to endure watching me change with a disease that got worse each year, he never stopped loving me.  When maybe some men would have left or pushed me aside, he stood by side and helped me through it.  When we met and I shared with him all I had been through in my life, he comforted me and that is when I knew he was made for me.  God knew what kind of man I needed and I have no doubts that Nate is my true soul mate.  I couldn't have lived with a macho, king-of-the-house, egotistical, narcissistic man and God knew that!  I needed a compassionate, loving, understanding, a man of steel, yes, but also of velvet and Nate was all that wrapped up into one.

I believe in the mindset I had carried for so many years that I expected him to not want me eventually and to leave me.  It was almost as if I couldn't understand why someone would love me.  Years of abuse had broken down my spirit and it would take God years to repair it but he sent Nate to be that tool.  Through the toughest years of our marriage at the height of my disease, Nate never wavered in his love towards me.  He knew me and he knew that the disease was covering up the true me inside.

God healed me in 2007 and our marriage has only grown even stronger and has a strength that it seems that no trial could break.  When your marriage has been tested in all ways, through extreme circumstances and made it through, you realize that you have something rare in today's society.  You want to hold on to it, never let it go and nurture it, so it grows and never dwindles!  Ever since my healing, I was able to finally become that woman I had always wanted and strived to be.  I was able to love my husband and child properly and serve them in the ways I had wished I had been able to before.

It all taught me, not only that my marriage was a gift from God, but that without that disease, I may not have known it.  Without that disease, I may not have had the compassion on others I do now.  Without that disease, I may not even be whom I am today.  I may not have known how truly and dearly my husband loved me and that he would stick with me through sickness and health.  It made me love him more and let go of the fears of my past and increase my self-worth and lift my spirits.

None of this would have been possible, if not for God.  If not for God sending Nate by my way to invite me to church when I was 19, I may not have been saved and met the man God made for me.  Thank you Lord for your blessings on me and these past 12 years of love, learning and growing!  To my husband, I love you dearly and may I always be the wife you need.