My Husband Rocks!

Last year John said to me,”I will fight for you!”

These words alone make my husband a rock star!  A rock star of perseverance. 

He spoke these words to me last summer days before going into the hospital to wait for and receive his heart transplant.  Through forty-three days of a staph infection, life support, heart transplant, not waking up, and finally coming home to finish recuperating, he definitely fought for me.

This year John is saying to me, “I will lay down my life for you!”

These words continue to make my husband a rock star!  This time a rock star of selflessness! 

My whole life God has given me a vision of being a wife, homemaker, and mother.  However, for reasons only fully known by God, John and I did not meet until later in my life than I had hoped and dreamed.  Since college I have primarily been a teacher, leaving the career at one point to be a consultant, and even though I enjoy the “act of teaching”, for many reasons have always felt a deep struggle, tension, and uneasiness in the career as a whole.  Despite trying to ignore it, this tension has only deepened throughout the years.

Since we have been married, John has experienced this struggle within me.  He has watched me come home from work every day as if I was coming home from a place that is contrary to everything I am, everything I believe in, and everything I see to be true, feeling depleted and worthless. 

Even though we do not have children yet, John is supporting me and encouraging me to pursue what I believe God has created me to be.  He has agreed for me to move away from my full-time career as a public school teacher to begin a tutoring business and ultimately have a more flexible schedule to serve him, care for our home, and be involved in ministry.

In many ways this is a sacrifice.  It is scary.  It is an act of faith.  “For we live by faith, not by sight.” (2 Corinthians 5:7)  However, John is displaying the courage of a true man of God.

My husband is selflessly laying down his life for the vision of the eternal – each other, our family, our friends, our community who we have the opportunity to influence.

The events that surrounded John’s life last summer were not his choice.  He chose not to give up. He chose to fight. He chose to look beyond the present. He chose faith instead of fear. But he did not choose the circumstances.  They were out of his control.

This year John is choosing to lay down his life – not literally – but the life he possesses, he controls –  so that together he and I can lay down our marriage and our family for the complete will of our Heavenly Father. This is a choice out of pure love, putting my happiness and well-being before his own.

My husband rocks because he trusts God with our future.  Even though there are a lot of unknowns about the coming year, he is completely surrendering to God’s call for him as a husband.  “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” 2 Corinthians 4:18

My husband is focusing on our future while trusting God with our present.