By the grace of God, I have been his wife for a decade today.

I remember the first time I saw him, surrounded by boxes of t-shirts and a clipboard with my name among twenty other transfer students’ names. He was given the title of Welcome Week Leader. I joke that I must have felt very welcome.

The truth is that he became my closest college friend, but both of us had significant others. We enjoyed the occasional dinner together or outing with friends. I once told my friend, Brittne that I feltI was most “his type” of the Welcome Week girls who had grown to be a close circle of friends. She was so shocked that I would make such a comment, especially considering that I had a boyfriend back home, that she told him about my seemingly ridiculous statement. He has occasionally recalled the way he hid his face and redirected his reaction as she broke this news from the backseat of his car on the way to church with friends.

We were eating Mexican when he told me that just because I was struggling with something didn’t mean I had to continue living in that same struggle. He was the first friend to meet me with both grace and truth.

We were eating Mexican again, with friends on a November day, when the waiter brought a ticket for two Speedy Gonzales orders and handed it to him. Incredibly defensive, I declared, “We are most certainly not together! Why would anyone think we were together?!”

Hours later, we were making chocolate chip cookies with his friend, Jon and my friend, Melanie. I clearly remember looking at him and thinking, “I think I’m falling in love with him.” I was astonished to even think such a thing about this friend, and yet I fully knew it was an undeniable truth.

The very next day, it was me who finally and awkwardly broke the ice outside my dorm room. I poured tiny pieces of my heart out in front of my dear friend, Melanie who was not only trapped in a car with us, but held her breath as the entire scene unfolded over a weekend I had titled, Happy Almost Christmas Day. I fully expected my confession of sorts to be met with a “We’re just friends,” response from my closest college pal. I was not in a place to be looking for a boyfriend. To be completely honest, I wasn’t looking at all. It was like I was being pulled toward this friend like a magnet.

19 months later, I learned from Jon’s best man speech that Bret had told him the very same thing the night before saying, “Jon, I think I’m falling for her.”

I can clearly remember standing at my desk in my dorm room when the phone rang. With one sleeve out of my pink, church sweater, and the other sleeve still on, I listened to the handsome voice on the other end of the phone admit, “It isn’t just you. I do have feelings for you.” Weeks later, we were inseparable. He graduated in December and in January, he left for Seminary. Eight hours apart, we mailed letters and drove long distances for visits with both of our families. We learned everything about each other through snail mail, phone calls that lasted hours at a time, and visits in my college town, his hometown, and my hometown.

Our mantra became, “I’m pretty sure about you.”

He told me he had never said “love” to anyone and would not until he knew he intended to marry that person. I bit my tongue for months, and began declaring “I like you a lot,” with great enthusiasm and a reoccurring frequency. I scratched out the word “love” and wrote in, “like you a lot” on a Valentine’s Day card that I planned to give him on February 14th.

Yet, it was February 7th when I was in the same dorm room I had been in when I received the phone call the past November. I was wearing pink house shoes this time, instead of a pink sweater. (I don’t forget details of this sort and pink was my go-to college color.) The handsome voice called from Seminary to say, “I’m in love with you.” And I knew he meant that he would love me forever.

In March, we ate dinner at an Italian restaurant in his hometown and he told me he knew. We stopped saying, “pretty sure.” We knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that God had led us to one another. Around this same time, he began ring shopping eight hours from my college town, and I began dropping hints of my diamond preferences when we were together.

On June 11th, he picked me up from my summer job at a Montessori school and we drove to a park near his hometown, an hour an a half away, with plans to meet his sister at a baseball game. I was wearing clothes appropriate for spending a full day with preschoolers, a navy polo from the GAP, a pair of khaki Bermuda shorts, casual flip flops, and my curly hair was thrown into a ponytail. In a hurry to meet his sister, we cut through a garden at the park.

I must have asked him when he thought we would be engaged, because I clearly remember him saying, “Whenever it happens, you’ll just know I love you more than anything in the world and that I want to spend my life with you.”

When we approached a candle-lit gazebo, I suggested we take another route to the ball-field saying, “Someone must be having a party here.” When I heard the music from the gazebo, I recognized one of my favorite Steven Curtis Chapman songs and something told me this wasn’t someone else’s party, after all.

In my defense, when your college boyfriend always wears a button down shirt, it is hard to see a surprise coming. He always dressed as though a special occasion was just around the corner. Let us remember that I was wearing Bermuda shorts and a GAP polo. I was clearly taken off guard. On the day I became engaged, I was dressed like a Girl Scout at summer camp which is all the proof he has ever needed to know that I was, indeed, surprised by this proposal.

He was kneeling by now, the best friend from college, saying the very words he had just said as we walked through the garden.

I love you more than anything in the world and I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”

I’m not one to cry often, so tears didn’t come, but I smiled until my cheeks hurt. In the past year, one of our favorite activities had become painting with friends and as a date. Appropriately, a painting leaned against a corner of the gazebo that read, Will You Marry Me? I had recently denied his request to have ice cream cake as our future wedding cake, so instead, he had purchased an ice cream cake for our proposal. We never made it to the baseball game with his sister, because the game never really existed. She was, however, hiding in the bushes by the gazebo as a sneaky photographer for the whole event. My favorite music played and my favorite flower, pink tulips, adorned a vase on a table.

I wasn’t waiting on forever, anymore. My forever had begun.

On our wedding day, I walked down the aisle to lyrics about God’s faithfulness, written by Sarah Groves and sung by my cousin, Lindsay. I didn’t have any first-hand experience about marriage just yet, but I knew that this love story and my entire life had been written by the faithfulness of a Sovereign God.

As the song began, my bridesmaids walked down the aisle of the church I had attended for twenty years. To me, each bridesmaid symbolically represented a season of my life. Each of them shared a part of my story. Each was a walking testament to God’s faithfulness in my life, dressed in fuchsia taffeta.

I stood far behind them in the church foyer, my arm through my Dad’s as they walked down one by one to the lyrics I had assigned them.

Sidenote: I micromanaged the entire wedding with eight pages of instructions, but I am (mostly) unapologetic about this because the day was free of major mishaps. Perhaps even funnier than my eight pages, is the fact that our best man recently returned the instructions to me on his own wedding day. Very funny, Jon.

A decade later, I occasionally see parts of this day as outdated. Wedding dresses do not stay in style, forever. These lyrics, however, are a timeless reminder of God’s grace in our lives. I thank God every time I hear this song or think upon these words. I would choose the same bridal processional again and again. I could not have known the truth of these lyrics at that time, but I see it so clearly now.

Morning by morning, I wake up to find the power and comfort of God’s hand in mine.

Season by season, I watch Him amazed at all of the splendor of His perfect ways.

All I have need of, His hand will provide. He’s always been faithful to me.

I can’t remember a trial or a pain he did not recycle to bring me gain.

I can’t remember one single regret in serving God only, and trusting His hand

All I have need of, His hand will provide. He’s always been faithful to me.

As a college friend played a bridge of the hymn, “Great is Thy Faithfulness” on piano, our flower girl and ring bearers walked down the aisle. The doors closed behind them.

My oldest cousin, Ryan stood beside me in an usher’s tuxedo and a pink tie. He looked my way. “Are you ready?” he asked. I gave him a nod and the doors opened again. My dad and I began our walk down the aisle as Lindsay sang these words:

This is my anthem. This is my song, the theme of the stories I’ve heard all along.

God has been faithful. He will be again. His loving compassion, it knows no end.

All I have need of, His hand will provide. He’s always been faithful to me.

On the day we said our wedding vows, we didn’t know what this life together would hold. I’ve never had an entirely bad day with Bret, but we have shared days and moments that were excruciatingly hard. God has been so present in our lives. He has been our refuge and our rock. God has been faithful every day of our life together. Every single day has held a flicker of hope, a promise from God to never forsake us or abandon us. The most painful days have been hard, but never fully dark.

We didn’t know that God would give us three sons. We didn’t know if we would have biological children at all. We didn’t know that we would take two of our babies home from the hospital, only to be rushed back to the emergency room when my blood pressure raised and my pulse slowed to a heart rate considered low even for a regular triathlon athlete. He never left my side.

We didn’t know there would be car accidents, job changes, hurts from people we loved, a tight budget, or a move hundreds of miles from the place we had built a life and called our home. We didn’t know everything that ministry would mean in our lives. We didn’t know how hard it could be to parent three, little boys born in a span of four years. We didn’t know we would fall in love with a Labradoodle puppy only to be called to a new home, a year later, where she couldn’t move with us. We didn’t know that following God would mean sometimes saying goodbye to everything that felt normal and starting all over again. We didn’t know how tight our finances would become or how long and tiring some days would feel. We didn’t know there would be anxiety or devastating loss, but we faced it together. He held my hand through it all.

We didn’t know how much we would love one another. We thought we had arrived, when we had only just begun.

When my teaching schedule didn’t allow time to nurse my babies, he worked in my building and covered my class once each afternoon, so that I could pump. The music teacher taught fourth grade science lessons so that his wife could mother their babies the way her heart longed to mother.

When our third baby was a year old, God prompted me to go on a mission trip to Haiti. Our boys were one, three, and five. When other people began to say, “What about your children?” in a condescending tone, he stepped in. My sweet husband told me, “If anyone else asks you about your children, you tell them that I am happy for you to go and that I support you. Don’t let anyone make you feel guilty for a second. I can take care of our boys. You’re a good mom.” On the way to Haiti, I found a card from Bret in my Bible, reassuring me of his support and prayers.

On the night my grandma passed away, he couldn’t talk me into waiting until morning to drive the four hours home to be with my dad. He didn’t even try to persuade me for very long. He simply began brewing a gigantic cup of coffee and wheeling my suitcase to the car.

Bret, you have continued to be a declaration of God’s love for me. You have been a consistent reminder of the way Jesus loves without condition. You have laid down your own life time and time again to love me in a sacrificial way. You have been a steadfast reminder of God’s faithfulness every day for ten years.

Marriage is not easy. This world is fallen and we are two sinful people trying to balance our days, our finances, and parenting responsibilities. This is not always a harmonious duet, and often feels more like a dance with two left shoes. We step on each other and we practice repentance and forgiveness with great frequency. Marriage is sanctifying to say the very least.

We couldn’t foresee the past ten years. We cannot foresee the future. And to be completely honest, we are fine with the unknown. We don’t write our story. We don’t direct our paths. We don’t number our days, but we know the One who does. And that has made all the difference.

Morning by morning, I wake up to find the power and comfort of God’s hand in mine. Season by season, I watch Him amazed in all of the mystery of His perfect ways. All I have need of, His hand will provide. He’s always been faithful to me.

Happy 10th Anniversary, Bret.

From my heart to yours,

~Courtney