A Year and A Half In...

Yesterday, Ryan and I celebrated a year and a half of marriage. As lovely as the year of firsts was...and it was lovely...it is equally lovely to have some seconds as well. To think back not just to one year...but to even before that.

When writing to you, I try to strike the balance between annoying you with newlywed sappiness and being openly full of praise for this answer to many years' worth of prayers. Today I hope you see these words not as annoying sap, but as genuine praise. Ryan has made the last year and a half so joyful in ways that I'd never known before. I'm grateful for him. I'm grateful to have someone to laugh with {and possibly to be laughed at BY} and someone to just spend the days with. The good ones and the bad ones. For all the frustrations of this season in which we juggle owning two homes and commuting all the time...there are equal joys and days of fun. And I'm grateful.

Yesterday I shared with you a glimpse into a journey God took me on EIGHT YEARS ago. I want to share a bit more of it today and I say it from the other side...now that God has answered this prayer of my heart. Yesterday and its celebration makes the words below all the sweeter. ALL the sweeter.

Somewhere in the middle of the prayer request/praise time that typically concluded the Ladies Bible Study, God took full advantage of an awkwardly quiet moment.  I was dutifully scribbling away on my sheet of loose leaf notebook paper...recording each request and each victory...

...Tap tap tap.  I know that sound.  That would be God.  I mentally answered the tapping as I kept scribbling what the last lady had shared.  Yes, God? 

About this prayer and fasting business.  I have a little assignment for you.  I’d like you to do it. 

I stopped writing mid-scrawl.  Excuse me?  I sincerely hoped that the quiet moment would continue because if someone else launched into a new request, I was going to miss the whole thing. 

I would like you to fast and pray on Tuesdays in the chapel at lunchtime.

Me?  Fast?  Had He not heard what I just said about loving food?  Well apparently He had heard it, but He’d also heard that little part I’d inserted right there at the end about challenging the women to listen to God and see what He wanted and follow through because if they didn’t it was sin.  And He heard the part where I said I’d do that right alongside them.  Why did my own words always come back to get me?

But what would I pray about? 

Your husband. 

Ha!  Was this some sort of joke?  What husband?  I didn’t have a husband.  I didn’t have hope for a husband.  Had God seen the town where I lived?  Had God taken a perusal of my church’s pews lately?  Not one single man unless I wanted to increase my age range to include senior citizens and college students.  Had God noticed the work crowd lately?  No single men there.  Why would I pray about my husband?  I’d come to nearly believe that it was my lot in life to be single until the end of time.  Either the end of time or the time so near the end that all we could do would be race wheelchairs and swap teeth for fun.

I’m pretty sure I rolled my eyes.  I know it’s not a nice thing to do ever, especially to God – and especially especially when He’s handing out an assignment.  But the whole thing just seemed so incredulous that I was sure I’d heard Him wrong – or not heard Him at all – maybe this was some weird trick Satan was playing to get my hopes up that a man existed for me. 

Someone was talking – time to rejoin the prayer requests.  I resumed my scribbling, but God’s assignment kept replaying in the back of my mind…fast and pray on Tuesdays in the chapel at lunchtime….fast and pray on Tuesdays in the chapel at lunchtime. 

We concluded our round of prayer requests and praises, and into silent prayer time we went.  My job was to close the prayer time after some time had passed, and while I waited, I gave God a silent agreement.  Okay.  If He wanted me to go to the prayer chapel on Tuesdays and pray away the lunch hour, go to the prayer chapel, I would. 

Knowing myself the way I do, I figured I better tell someone about it before I chickened out altogether.  So as the ladies mixed, mingled, and munched on the remaining snacks after our time together had concluded, I slid over next to my pastor’s wife.  Carefully omitting the reason for the prayer time, I just told her that I’d felt convicted to spend my Tuesdays fasting and praying in the prayer chapel.  She encouraged me to follow God’s leading and I sat back, satisfied that I was about to embark on a great journey ordained by God Himself. It would be GREAT. And esay.

Right.