Outside the Camp

I apol­o­gize in advance if you were expect­ing Part 2 of Suf­fer­ing as Chris­t­ian. In that arti­cle I will be talk­ing about how “pick­ing up our cross” might include tol­er­at­ing a dif­fi­cult mar­riage to honor Jesus’ teach­ing on divorce.

Being encour­aged by a recent arti­cle by my sis­ter in Christ, Sajithra, I wanted to stop-the-presses to rejoice in the mar­riage rela­tion­ship my Father has given me with Rebekah.  I present 25 things I love about her.  Things that my heart feel warm and things that make me smile.

Rebekah, these are the things I trea­sure about you:

1. You are my one and only.
2. You enjoy WDW as much as I do.  (Still trea­sure first time we ever road a mono­rail and you instantly “got it”.)
3. You have kept every­thing I have ever given you, no mat­ter how triv­ial.  (And that your “chest” would prob­a­bly be the first thing you would grab in the event of a fire.)
4. I enjoy writ­ing songs with you and lis­ten­ing to you sing.
5. It makes me smile that you still man­age our finances with a pen and paper, long after we got our first computer.
6. Your obsessive-compulsive list mak­ing.  (And the funny mem­o­ries when the list was an epic-fail, such as the when we went to a Dis­trict Con­ven­tion and you for­got to pack my dress clothes.)
7. That you are not afraid to speak up when you believe strongly about something.
8. Your will­ing­ness to see things from “the other side”.  (Even though this often annoys me, it brings good bal­ance to the relationship.)
9. Our ever expand­ing ” book of quotes”.  (Some­times I smile when I think about some­one find­ing it some­day and won­der­ing what kind of a weird dialect it is writ­ten in.)
10. That you have loved me since we were chil­dren.  (And never stopped.)
11. Every con­cert we have ever been too and even now that I feel mature enough to sit in the bal­cony you still want to be down in the “pit”.
12. You tol­er­ate the dumb  movies I watch.  (Par­tic­u­larly when you begrudg­ingly find your­self enjoy­ing them with me.)
13. You stand by my side when no one else will.
14. You are will­ing to step out in faith.
15. You share my love of Pepsi and we have a mutual hatred for Coca-Cola.
16. Our awe­some wed­ding that broke every JW con­ven­tion of the day.  (To this day I’m grate­ful that we weren’t mar­ried in a King­dom Hall.)
17. Your fierce, fierce loy­alty to her friends.
18. When “Dirty Danc­ing” is on TV, you will drop every­thing to sit down and watch it for the hundredth time.
19. Your self-sacrificing nature.
20. Watch­ing you play games like Metal Gear Online.
21. The lit­tle things that still make me laugh. (i.e. raviolo)
22. Lay­ing around lis­ten­ing to scratchy Car­pen­ters albums together.
23. That you are a good mother.
24. That you are my BEST friend.
25. SAVING MY LIFE! Your will­ing­ness never to lose faith in me and the long nights spent pray­ing for me when I couldn’t pray myself.