Tribute to Patty

No. It is not our anniversary.  It is not her birthday (although my son’s birthday is coming up in a few weeks). It is not a special occasion of any kind that I am aware of.  I am not in the doghouse (at least to my knowledge).  And there is nothing that I want in return.

For no other reason other than the fact that God has blessed me with having her in my life, I just want to take the time to honor my wife, Patty.  I could bring her flowers, but flowers will fade.  I could bring her candy, but once the joy of chocolate has passed through the lips, it is gone forever – well, unless you count the fact that the calories stick around a lot longer than you want.  I could send her a card, but that is just a private praise between me and her.  Beside why let someone else pen the words that I need to say myself.  Instead, I want to do something a bit more public and permanent because she deserves it.  And so I want to shout from the symbolic mountaintop of this blog that “I LOVE MY WIFE!”

Some of you other husbands out there may argue otherwise, but I happen to believe that I have the best wife in the world.  Honestly, I do not deserve her.  There is no other person in the whole world that would love me the way she does – or should I rather say that there is no other person in the whole world that would PUT UP with me the way she does.

Just the other night, when I was so tired that I could no longer stay awake, my beautiful bride stayed up to wait for my clothes to finish drying so that she could hang them up – just so I would have clothes to wear to work today.  Now I am no chauvinist.  I realize that it is NOT my wife’s responsibility to do my laundry and hopefully she knows that I can and would do my own laundry.  However, she loves me enough that she is willing to humble herself and serve me by hanging up my clothes while I sleep.  I never want to take that for granted.  Regrettably I do sometimes, but she still gives even if I don't acknowledge it.

And when it comes to ministry, there is no greater partner to have in ministry than to have her.  I have never presumed that God’s calling on my life applied to her and I have never presumed that she needed to be involved in any particular ministry in which I was involved.   If she determined today that she could not be involved in “our” ministry any longer because God wanted her to do something different (such as start a new ministry not directly associated with mine), I would not complain because she knows that she must follow God’s leading in her own life above all else - including me... I get that and respect it.  But, at least thus far, God has blessed me with a partner that has a similar vision and calling to myself and has as much of a servants heart as is humanly possible.  It never seems to fail that whenever God places a particular vision on my heart for ministry, that she is right there cheering me on, helping me in whatever way she can, and even taking a leadership role in making things happen. What’s more, she does it all without seeking glory for herself.  I thank God every day that he has given her to me.

That is not to say she is not a “yes-man” – or as the case may be a “yes-woman”.  We disagree about things from time to time and that is how it should be.  It is because of her that I have confidence in the decisions that are made because we can talk through them from two different perspectives.  We still make mistakes, but without her as a sounding board and a voice of reason, I know that I would be making many more mistakes than I do.

As if all of that were not enough, my wife is literally my best friend.  Oh sure, I have other friends – and I love spending time with them.  However, there is no one in the world I would rather spend my time with than Patty.  We may not always have the same interests – particularly when it comes to TV shows – and we each have time that we spend away doing things with others; but we always genuinely desire to be together and to “do” together.

Admittedly, this has not always been the case.   It has taken a lot of work and spiritual maturing on both of our parts to get to this point.   When we first got married, I was a selfish, emotionally immature, shallow, man-child that had no idea what it meant to truly love someone with a godly love.  When we first got married, Patty was an idealistic, spiritually immature, new believer with extremely high expectations.  Sound familiar?  The results were devastating.  We both had to learn the hard way what God really expects from us in our marriages.

For me, I had to learn to love my wife the way Christ loves the church.  I had to learn to be selfless and give unconditionally to my wife regardless of whether or not she reciprocated.   I could not truly love her because I did not trust her to love me back.  If I gave to her unconditionally, that would make me a door-mat.  She would walk all over me and take advantage of me like so many others that I thought were my friends had done in the past.  It wasn’t until I realized that Jesus Christ loved me with a truly unconditional love and that I was in turn supposed to act towards her in the same manner that I began to understand what my love for her was supposed to look like in everyday life.  Jesus loved me when I was a sinner.  Jesus loved me when I was his enemy.  But even after I gave my life to Jesus, he continues to love me unconditionally despite the fact that I often do not reciprocate that love.  No matter how many times I fail him, he still loves me.  No matter how unfaithful I may be to him, he remains faithful.  He is always doing that which is in my best interest – even if I do not understand it or agree with it.  Jesus gave his live for me and he continues to look after me every day.  He would never consider himself a door-mat because he knows that as he remains faithful to me, I grow closer to him and appreciate and love him all the more for it.  This is how I have learned to love my wife. Even if she did take advantage of me, I would still love her unconditionally.  It was a major leap of faith on my part, and the results have been overwhelming.  Instead of taking advantage of me, she has blossomed – spiritually and otherwise.  And so I have no trouble bragging about how wonderful a wife she truly is.

Bottom line is that I just wanted to take a moment and give tribute to a pretty wonderful lady.  I love you, sweetie.  Happy...not anniversary... not birthday...  Happy Just Today.