A Husband Worth Waiting For

God is so gracious to me!  He has given me a husband who knows the gospel.  A man who trusts in Jesus and knows how to apply truth to our marriage, our conflict, and to the life decisions we make.  I could not ask the Lord for anything more in a husband.  My husband blows the standard of what I use to think husbands were out of the water.  Why?  Is it his looks? His talents? His discipline in life?  His integrity? His sense of humor?  His musical geniousness?  No.

These things are like a cherry on top of something greater.  Its the character of Christ that I see in him.  Its that He holds onto this life loosely and is willing to take risks to trust the Lord through- like raising a support team to make it possible to do college ministry.  Like being willing to move into dangerous neighborhoods to relationally share Jesus with people.  Its his confidence in the work that Christ has done on the cross for His sin- His total belief in God’s grace and freedom from the bondage of sin and death.  Its that he really loves me as Christ loves the church.  He is faithful and committed to our growth as Christians, and he is faithful to me.  He honors me, serves me, seeks my advice and opinions, is SO thoughtful for me, and is so gracious to me during conflict.  Its that he says to me, “My love for you is not conditional.  It is not based on how well you do, how much you do, or if you fail, it is based on my committment to you.  And nothing will change how committed to you I am.”  Who knew men like this exist today?  THEY DO!

The greatest dating advice I ever received in the area of dating was this, “Run hard after Jesus and life.  Make living for Jesus and giving your life away for others your biggest pursuit.  If God wants you to marry, you’ll run into your husband along the way.”

The day I threw my idol of marriage and relationships out the window after I went through some pretty bumpy break-ups and became a Christian and said, “Lord, here I am!  I want to serve you and give up my life to follow you.  Oh, and if you think its good for me when I’m ready, I would LOVE to marry a missionary!”  was the day that the Lord truly began drawing me closer and closer to this rare missionary.  In our American culture, its easy to think of missionaries as people who just fly to other countries to share the gospel.  Thankfully, God’s idea and purpose for missionaries is so much bigger than this stereotype!  All Christians are missionaries and are called to share Jesus in their entire lifestyle.  But I didn’t just want to marry someone who said they were a Christian.  I wanted to marry someone whose heart and life were actually transformed by the power of God. A man who was laying his life down that others might know this gospel of truth, grace, and freedom.  Someone whose values were not of this world or for this world, but of God’s kingdom and eternity.  I remember how my desire for my husband changed after I gave my life to Christ.  God truly gave met my desires with a man beyond my dreams.  Here’s what I got in my missionary husband:

1. A man who does not fear change

2.  A man who does not cling to comfort

3.  A man who values building up the kingdom of God more than gaining more worldly achievements

4.  A man who desires to mentor younger men and seeks counsel from older men

5.  A man who treats me like I am a queen (literally!  I feel so adored, loved and served by him!)

6.  A man who shares about Jesus in a non-threatening, relational and intentional way

7.  A man who is slow to anger and quick to repent of sin

8.  A man who is quick to forgive others and me!

9.  A man who in young, but whom the Lord has given wisdom and knowledge

10.  A man who loves to serve others

11.  A man who admits his weaknesses

12.  A man who stewards his money as though it is not his own, but God’s

13.  A man who loves to give his money to support others

14.  A man who is a good steward of his body: he eats healthy and exercises

15.  A man who loves one woman and is committed to one woman

16.  A man who sees the bible as the word of God and who uses it in ALL areas of his life

17.  A man who loves others and has compassion

18.  A man who would rather take risks that others might know Jesus than to live in his own world of comfort and security

19.  A man who never threatens or uses me, but respects me and honors me

20.  A man who supports my passions and dreams

21.  A man who encourages me to be creative and spontaneous

22.  A man who loves my family and brothers a ton!

23.  A man who helps around the house just as much as me   (I know, I know, I’m lucky!)

24.  A man who I trust

25.  A man who I delight to submit to and follow

26.  A man who I can’t wait to be a dad of our kids someday!

27.  A man who gives me great advice

28.  A man who takes me dancing and plans fun dates!

29.  A man who could be a professional listener

30.  A man who leads me closer to God and encourages me as I grow in Christ’s character

Thank you, God, for giving me Nick!!

Woman Redefined.

If you follow my blog regularly, you’ve gotten a glimpse of how sweet and how sanctifying (which also means: to make holy; set apart as sacred; consecrate) marriage is… because I’ve let you into the ebbs and flows of our life as newlyweds. If you grew up watching movies like Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days, and basically any other chick flicks, you have been led astray just like me. You have been led to believe that if you are beautiful and have no stomach, big boobs, and a nice butt to stare at, you will win the heart of another piece of eye candy who will sweep you off your perfectly cute feet, marry you, and then you’ll live “Happily _______ _______.” I have no doubt you can fill in the blanks.

Perhaps you weren’t led astray by the ferry-tales of Disney, but I was. Do you know what I heard on Minnesota Public Radio the other day? That Disney makes more sales selling princess and bridal accessories to five-year-olds than any other Disney Disney apparel… SAD! Five-year-olds are suppose to be skipping around in fields, playing and eating peanut-butter and jelly, not idolizing these female non-real characters as they prance around in bikinis while searching for their life-long lovers! Ok. I’ll stop my Disney rant. I really do like Cinderella.

Anyway. Marriage HELPS with SOME problems and is most definitely the sweetest gift apart from Christ I’ll ever be given in this life, but Hollywood did not prepare me for what is actually true about marriage. This is why I am so utterly thankful to have parents who are still happily married and to have been discipled/mentored by older Christian single and married women throughout college who gave me a REAL picture of singleness and marriage, the joys and struggles that befall, and how to be content either way. While its true that marriage does equate entering into a new and exciting chapter FILLED with amazing blessings, it helps to be sobered and trained for how to walk through what often becomes a battlefield.

I seem to be eagerly alert for the day that my marriage could at some point become my life’s biggest battle (and at times, feels like it!) … because in our culture it just seems that we’re doomed to expect it at some point, and in no form or fashion am I above the rest. But I do want to get to the root of why these battles begin, or I fear I’ll never change my ways during conflict with Nick. And I don’t want to be on the pathway of doom. Divorce will never be an option, till death do us part! I said it, and I meant it- forever and ever am I delighted and committed to work through conflict with Nick. I’ll admit I’m still very much a starry-eyed newly wed. Most days I think I could just stare at Nick and do nothing else… but we do have our fights. So, I’ll need help.

Instead of looking to Hollywood for the definition of love and romance, I am going to look to the bible and older, more mature married people than myself. God is the creator of marriage, so you’d think he has a lot more wisdom to offer us than Hollywood’s misrespresentation of the beauty and ideas of what being a woman is, what marriage is, and what husbands are suppose to be. I have yet to be proven wrong that the bible is more helpful than the media around me, but let me let you into a scene from my freshmen year of college…

I was so unsatisfied, but on the outside I had it all: a serious boyfriend, three jobs, perfect grades, a regular exercise routine, and awesome friends. Yet, I wasn’t happy. When circumstances didn’t go my way, do you know who I invited to my pity parties? Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughay. I would watch “How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days” over and over again or some other chick flick. Seriously, I would pop one into the tiny TV in my dorm room and watch it while planning “cookies and milk” night for our dorm hall. Ridiculous! I think to myself in hindsight. I watched these chick flicks because they displayed what seemed like true love. I would watch them and feel crappy cause I didn’t have it, yet hopeful because these movies seemed to portray that it CAN exist! Oh, if only I knew where to look to find it…

Hollywood combined with my sinful desires destroyed me… before I knew that I could be more loved and accepted by God than I could ever be from people. I assure you that I still watch movies regularly. Its just that I no longer bow down to what they tell me about who I am and what will make me happy in life. After living twenty-one years completely defining myself by the standards of our culture and the media, I have had a rude-awakening, after beginning to trust in Christ, to who I REALLY am and what is REALLY true about my self-worth in the eyes of God.

I’ll never forget the first day of kindergarten. I held a boy named Johnny’s hand, and I believe my teacher had to refrain many testosterone-filled five-year-olds from kissing me. I must have been hard to resist while proclaiming that Santa Clause was real and learning to sound out the alphabet! However, I remember feeling devastated when one boy decided he wanted to kiss Shelly instead of me because Shelly had her ears pierced! The chances of me being loved drastically sunk to somewhere below zero in my mind as a five-year-old. I couldn’t be loved for who I was… I had to have something more to get attention. It didn’t matter how much my parents loved and cherished me (which they did A TON!)… I was born with a natural tendency to sin and to want to be worshipped myself, rather than worship God. I was born with an innate desire to hear what God says, but to totally NOT believe any of it and look everywhere else- ANYWHERE else- but God for love and approval. Age 5-21 were the hardest most unsatisfying years of my life as I chased a false identity for one reason: to be needed and wanted by men.

I wanted to be the object of affection from the opposite sex from a young age. I wanted to be needed. I would do anything to get these things. Nowhere does our culture tell us that being a single woman is a joyful and wonderful experience. If anything, it tells us that the reasons for being a single woman are to show men that you don’t NEED them and you can make it for yourself without them. You can have your “Miss Independent” streak and shun away all attention from men all together. You can prove yourself. Well, I’m sorry. But, honestly, does this angry attempt at “Lone Success” truly make us happy women? What if we could be joyfully single? Patiently single? Single and still desiring the love and affection of an amazing man? I was anything but patient or happy.

I think deep down, we “independence seekers” are still unsatisfied because we were created with an intelligent design- with a radical opportunity to love and enjoy womanhood the way God has created it to be. Does this mean we should all be at home ironing and cooking with pink polka-dotted aprons until hubby and kiddies get home at the end of each day?! NO! Not at all! Perhaps for some, and that is perfectly ok if a woman feels called by God to serve her family and husband in this way. But this isn’t the only way, and its not mandatory for all Christian women. There is a biblical womanhood to be discovered, and it can be lived out in the working world, in politics, in schools, in hospitals, in the music business, in sales, the marketing world, in the home, and in so many other careers.

The sky is the limit with our God-given abilities as women, but it’s the motives and the heart behind why we’re living like we are- that determine if we’ll really be happy and satisfied or not. I think if we’re honest, at the end of the day, we’re all dying to be rescued and swept off our feet by the man of our dreams. Isn’t there a hidden desire in all of us women that wants to be rescued into the arms of a strong and trustworthy leader? I would find it hard to believe if women, at their true core, actually feel satisfied when they are doing the rescuing, date-asking and phone number grabbing.

Little did I know, I was this woman. But I grabbed guys’ attention in different ways than verbal requests for their presence across the table with me on a so-called date. I played the innocent “girl-next-door.” You know, the wholesome girl that people “desire for marriage.” The girl who you could just sit with and pour your heart out to, and she would comfort and listen. She would secretly gain more self-esteem from feeling needed by these relationships in her life. I liked being this girl. This girl that was hard to get, yet so soon would give anything to be in a serious relationship. If a guy EVER pursued me, I thought for about a millisecond before I nearly interrupted the invitation with a hearty and school-girlish: “Yes!” Almost as though I were being proposed to. I said yes as if my life depended on it- depended on assuring myself that I could get attention from men.

I have previously blogged about my struggle with irrational anger. I have no doubt that I will struggle with this again, but I am just now beginning to get to some deeper roots of where this anger is coming from. For most of my life, I have been defined by the amount of attention I could get from guys. As I begin to believe in different standards for who I am and how I am loved by God, I struggle to leave my old ways of thinking and believing. I struggle to believe that I am still worth something, I am still beautiful, and I am still wanted- even if Nick has to finish a work task, or even he would like to spend an hour reading his Popular Mechanics Magazine or spend a few hours playing racquetball at the U of M Rec Center with students. He does these things because he enjoys them, not because he desires them more than me. He would gladly cancel any of these things (and has!) to come running to my side to comfort me and be with me if I’m having a bad day. He will even come home from work for me!

He’s shown me over and over again that he truly cares and loves me more than anything in the world (besides God)… yet I still run to the lie that I’m not worthy of love unless I can remain the most attractive and desirable woman around. I place a lot of anxiety in maintaining this status- this status that says: Katie+ something = lovable. When God is saying to me in every moment: Katie + nothing = always lovable, now that I am saturated with the righteousness of Christ. This makes me worthy of love.

My dream is to be so changed by God’s love for me- His love that doesn’t ask or require me to add anything to who I already am- to believe so much in his grace covering all my shame and sin, that I am unaffected and unshaken if I am not wanted or “needed” by another person or my husband. I am the object of God’s affection all the time! Sadly, I am still living a lot of the time to be the object of someone else’s affection. Namely, my husband. I will love Nick better and be so much more gracious when I become a woman who finds her worth and identity in Christ before I look for my identity in my husband. I am confident that I am becoming this woman ONLY because God is faithful to me, though I go through trials and set-backs. The apostle Paul promises me that God is going to continue to work in me in Philippians Chapter 1.

Phil. 1:6 And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.

Thanks for reading as I peel off the layers of myself and expose to you a rather broken and insecure girl, made confident and perfect through Jesus Christ… being made MORE like Him through my husband, Nick Stromwall. He is cuter, sweeter, more gracious, more helpful, more EVERYTHING than I ever dreamed in a the man I would marry. I don’t blame the media for my anger. I will take ownership for my sinful desires involved- my need to get approval, my desire to be perfectly physically attractive, my desire to be worshipped… its not getting these things that make me angry. When I get angry, I’m finding out, its because I am holding myself to a standard I cannot meet, or holding Nick to a standard that he cannot meet. Jesus Christ is the perfect resolution to our conflict. Jesus can meet all of our standards and provide for us a perfect relationship with Him alone, and we don’t have to meet any standards to get his love. We only have to believe that He is real and trustworthy to enter into a life-changing relationship with him.

We will still struggle, but we no longer have to give in to the dominion of sin and lies. Because of Christ, my idea of being a woman has been radically redefined. I can break free from the cultural lies I use to believe in and these recent patterns of anger. I hope that as I learn to believe that I am adored and desired by a perfect God that I will feel less angry and MUCH MORE GRACIOUS towards my husband when conflict arises. The more satisfied I am in God, the more I will give grace. Giving grace shows God’s mercy and kindness. Isn’t this what I want to show others?

I’m beginning to think so.

Date Day

I love Saturdays.  Why?  Because I get to spend it with Nick doing something either random, surprising, planned, or spontaneous- sometimes just us and sometimes we hang out with others.  Whatever we do on Saturdays, we do it together.  This past Saturday, we went to Afton Apple Orchard and walked through giant corn stalks and got slightly angry because we got lost in the corn maze.  When we finally got out, I felt like that feeling when you win something.  Kinda dumb, I know, but it felt really cool to finish a corn maze!    Here are the pics…

Lots-a-big-corn!

The love of my life!