9 Months and 3 Days

Hey Everyone, I just wanted you all to know that I am beginning this blogspot to keep in contact with you and because I love writing and recording existence. Anyone who would visit this site probably knows that Brad and I were married last August 6th. We celebrated our 9 month anniversary 3 days before our son was born. It has been an inscrutably intense and catalytic 9 months. We both love being married and are continually surprised by the grace extended to us by Christ and by each other. The comfort of companionship is very sweet. And, despite my deep fear at my smallness of heart, I have fallen deeply in love with my husband. Brad has continued to learn the surpising lesson (for both of us) that despite my tangled labrynth of thoughts and questions and confusions, I am actually quite simple: I need the reassurance of un-conditioned love. Brad, above any other strength, excels at real-life love: knowing consideration and unfeigned affectionate everyday kindnesses. I would like to say out here that six things ring in my heart this year, six gifts beyond beyond: Christ has saved my soul, has saved my husband's soul -- captured us whole; God has given me my husband Brad; God has given me my son, Atticus; God has given me my dear dear family and Brad's lovely family for my own; I have the deep pleasure of keeping and making a home in this city cottage in the midst of a tree-filled, music-rich city; and my little family here has become part of a new church plant in north Minneapolis where we are growing in friendship with many families and delighting in the worship music and the rich preaching each week.
My heart overflows with gratefulness, gladness...contentment -- CONTENTMENT! Me -- who has always thought a fitting epitaph for my headstone to be: "Too much, yet never Enough." And now I think I can truly say, I feel...satisfied. (Albeit not stagnant satisfaction -- ever diligent foward and deeper and higher...but satisfaction nonetheless.)
As there is less and less space for "me", I am more and more free from the burden of myself. The liberation is cool water.