30 Days of Thankfulness: Day 2

CCC Children Ministry Appreciation Dinner, Christmas 2005

It is very fitting that Day 2 of my 30 Days of Thankfulness challenge happens to be the six year anniversary of Jonathan and I's first date.

Today, I am overwhelmingly thankful for Jonathan.

I truly love this man.  His heart for God, his passion for ministry, his desire for reaching the next generation for Christ stole my heart from square one.  Our post-college first conversation was over Andy Stanley's book The Next Generation Leader.  But I am getting ahead of myself... let me back up a bit.

I originally met this man in college; our social circles overlapped due to our friends, though we did not hang out with each other.  He hung out in the student center; I was conjugating Greek and Hebrew verbs in the library.  He was in pastoral studies program and I swore I was not going to go anywhere near them or the youth ministry guys.  But fast forward a couple of years later:  Jonathan was serving as a Youth & Associate Pastor for a Baptist church outside of Columbia, and I was working as the Children's Director for Columbia Crossroads Church while struggling to adjust with the changes of my future with Wycliffe Bible Translators and putting my masters work at Trinity Western Seminary in Vancouver, BC, on hold.  I did not know where God was going to put me next, but I did not expect a man to enter the picture at that time.

But he did.

And I am truly thankful for him.  It has been a joy (most of the time!) to do ministry together with him, from a church plant we helped with in Tennessee just a few short months after our wedding, to working with needy children and youth in the upstate of South Carolina, to where we are now in the Coastal Georgia region.  From our first phone call (that lasted five hours) to following Wednesday night six years ago where we met at Cool Beans Coffee Company after our respective church responsibilities were done, I knew from his warm smile and huge bear hug that this was the man God had intended for me to be my husband, the man who I had saved myself for, to love with my whole being.  Not saying we haven't had our trying times, but we are stronger today than we have ever been.  He is my love, the father of my wonderful children, and a man whom God has great things in store for.

I love you, Jonathan.  Thank you for these past six years and I am looking forward to every additional day that God gives us together.