Foot Washing Comes to Life

I wrote this for the February MMe-Note {e-newsletter we send out for Mid-Morning} but wanted you to see it too.

When Ryan and I got married, we fully embraced some wedding traditions and fully discarded others. One of the discarded traditions was that of not seeing each other the morning of the wedding. I told Ryan if he wanted any sort of a calm bride come ceremony time, I needed to see him at the start of the day.

So my alarm blared at 6:30 and I bolted out of bed (yeah, that's the only time THAT has ever happened in my lifetime) and made coffee in our travel mugs (of course) and scurried out to the courtyard of the resort where we would be married later that day. I texted Ryan, who was staying with his best friend nearby and told him I was ready, and a few minutes later, he met me in the pre-dawn moments. We walked, hand in hand, down to the beach and made a little nest in the sand.

We listened to water lapping onto sand and watched birds circle around, and behind us, the sun crept up into the sky. It was the perfect start to a wedding day.

And for two hours, we sat in the sand, drinking coffee, eating cookies, praying together, reading Scripture, exchanging gifts and...at the end...we washed each other's feet.

I sat in the sand and watched as Ryan took our blue pottery and walked to the water's edge to fill it. He brought it back to me and we cried and made promises of holding a servant's heart toward the other all the days of our marriage. It was picturesque and beautiful.

But you know what? As beautiful as that was (and I wouldn't change a thing about it), what it represents is not always beautiful. Ryan promised to love and serve me as Christ loved and served the church - and this last week, he did that.

As most of you know, Ryan and I live an hour away from Fort Wayne. Every day, I get up and drive an hour to work and he gets up and drives 45 minutes in another direction to work as a PTA in a rehab hospital.

And those stats are on a good day. In the month of January, it was not unusual for my hour-long commute to be two hours - one way. As Ryan looked ahead to our schedule for Share last week, he saw that I'd not only be working more hours than normal, but that the winter treachery didn't seem to be planning any sort of break for central Indiana. He knew I'd be getting up at 4:30 in the morning, leaving at six to begin my commute, working until 7 or later at night and then starting out for a potential 2 hour drive home. I'd fall in bed and get up to do that all over again.

So he said to me, For that week, let me be the commuter. We'll stay in Fort Wayne so you can be close to the station and I'll drive back and forth.

And so for that week, he did. He got up early and drove BOTH our commutes by himself - making the hour and 45 minute (one way) trek on some occasionally nasty roads - and driving back to Fort Wayne every night so we could see each other for at least a few hours. And he let me rest.

And it occurred to me that THIS was foot-washing in action. The sacrifice he made in time, fuel, inconvenience and energy was one way he made good on a promise he made on a sunny, sandy beach fourteen months ago. THIS was sacrificial love come to life.

This is the month of love, and it's so much fun to make the month of love...pretty. Flowery and sunny and picturesque. And sometimes love is that. Sometimes it's warm water on soft feet. But sometimes love is early mornings and late nights stuck in a car in frigid temps just to say to someone - you are worth this sacrifice to me. Let me serve you. And let me tell you...I'm not sure when I felt MORE loved than I did this week.

Maybe God is calling you to foot-washing this month. To love through a mess. Will you do it?