Five Years, Five Lessons

Tomorrow will be Josh and I's five year anniversary. I stole an idea from another blog and decided to write about five life-lessons I've learned during those five years.

5) God is good. During our marriage I have watched God provide for us time and time again. I believe God has placed us in towns to live in at just the right times. I believe he has given Josh jobs where he is supposed to work at just the right times. I believe he has allowed opportunities to come and go so that we could learn and grow from them at just the right times. God is so faithful to care for those who love him, and he has blessed us far more than we deserve.

4) Save. Neither Josh nor I have been very good about saving money during our marriage, but I am grateful for the little we have. In today’s world it is naïve to assume you are secure in any job, and I believe it is foolish not to have the finances available to both survive for a while without an income and to move if necessary. Twice during our marriage Josh and I have had to survive off savings for as many as three and a half consecutive months. At the end of those months came first and last months’ rents, pet deposits, utility deposits… bottom line- we need to rely on God, but we also need to save. God takes care of and feeds the ants, but they still have to save in order to survive the winter. People as a whole could learn a lesson from those tiny little ants.

3) Our Greatest Gift is Time. I very much enjoyed the time I had with my husband the four (or so) years we were married before we had our children, and now that we have children, I am very grateful for the time we all get to spend as a family. I believe it is more important for Josh and I to “waste” a day by not being productive and instead invest time into our family than to “waste” our day away on a thousand never-ending projects. Yes- there is certainly a need to take care of business and be productive… but in our lives there will always be a car in the garage that could use some work… there will always be a pile of junk that could stand to be sorted and put away… there will always be more dishes to do… but our kids will not always be little. Our kids will not always want to hang out with mom and dad. Someday our kids will be grown and gone, and I do not plan on wasting what little time God has given me with them by always putting family time off for the sake of yet another project.

2) I married the best man I could have ever dreamed of! As children I think all of us women dream of what our husbands might be like someday. I know I did; I used to think about my life after I got married and what it might be like. I would imagine how many kids I might have and how many cats I would love… well, I don’t have myself a kitty right now, but Josh is so much more than I ever dreamed a husband could be. 1 Corinthians 2:9 says, “…No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him.”  I always thought this verse was talking about life after death, but now I think it could also refer to the incredible blessings God gives us right during this lifetime. I could have never conceived a wonderful man like Josh while dreaming as a child… and now I live with the man every day, and still sometimes have trouble conceiving why God would bless me with him in my life.

1) Contentedness is Learned. Oh, how I wish someday I could be like Paul when he said he had learned how to be content during the happiest stages of his life and also during the most trialing. I do not believe I can make that statement yet, but I have learned that contentedness is not a passing feeling that occurs when everything is going our way. In order to be content we have to consciously make the decision to be satisfied with every stage of our lives. I have learned that one way to learn contentedness is through practicing the art of gratitude. I feel much more satisfied with my life when I am tempted to drown myself with worry when I stop and give God thanks for everything that he has given me and my family. I thank him for being so much bigger than me and being able to see the larger picture that I might be temporarily blinded to… and though I am probably not as “good” as Paul, I believe I can say that I have started to learn how to be content in this life.