Today is Chad’s 44th birthday. Sometimes it takes my breath away, how quickly that our life is flying past. I remember exactly how I felt about life back in 1995 when I first laid eyes on him. He was young and unsure and I was naive and cautious. We struck up an unlikely friendship that puzzled lots of people, and here we are, a couple of decades later, still friends.
There are times when I get sad, thinking about the fact that we only have one lifetime to live as husband and wife. Our life isn’t perfect, because we aren’t perfect. There is plenty of un-fun stuff to deal with when you’re all grown up, but we are happy, truly happy, to be side by side through the good and the bad of the human existence.
After twenty years I’m beginning to learn that one key to Christian marriage is realizing that your husband, your closest friend, is also your brother in Christ. He is yours to uphold and safeguard. To marvel at as He grows in faith. To encourage, to bring honor to, to love. And at the end of this marriage, when one us of slips from this life to the next, we can take comfort in knowing that he is my brother and I am his sister, both heirs of the King who brought us together in the first place. We will have eternity.
I once heard John Piper say that whatever the marriage relationship is on earth, it will be something infinitely better in Heaven. Chad may one day cease to be my husband, but he will never cease to be my brother. It’s one of the great gifts of Christian marriage–knowing that we will forever worship our Savior, side by side. We will see each other as we were always meant to be. And we will know that, through this too-short life, we helped each other prepare for the day we would stand before the Lord.
What an undeserved blessing. Happy birthday to my husband, my friend, my brother.
