Originally published Thursday, 24 July 2014.
It was our third anniversary and my parents gave us their last weekend at their timeshare in Lake Tahoe. While we'd never experienced the glorious beauty of the west lake, in every mention of where we were going, people would rave. I mean raaaaave about it's beauty.
It'll make you think of heaven, one friend said. Especially when the water is still and glassy.
If only I'd known how much prophecy was percolating in her words.
We checked in, grabbed some dinner, and then decided to take a little drive around the lake.
Now, those of you who've been to Lake Tahoe know that "little" and "lake" aren't quite companions.
We drove in silence for the first 30 minutes, both lost in our own thoughts about the last three years. Another 30 minutes passed of small talk about how beautiful the lake really was. Then I blurted, How big is this lake?!"
We laughed.
And then I started crying.
And then Tyson, like the average guy, was utterly and totally confused.
You see, when we began our drive around the lake, I remembered my friends words about heaven and glassy and stillness.Man, it does look like heaven. Or at least what we perceive heaven to be. I can't wait for heaven. I can't wait for the Ctrl+Alt+Dlt button on life. Although I love my life, I know heaven will be greater.
Wait, how do I know that? How I do know God is just going to start everything over? That goes against everything we know about Him. He is a Creator, an architect, a designer and a lover of beautiful things. He takes His time. He owns time. (Click to tweet.)
So what would cause me to think that in the new heaven and new earth, all things will cease to exist as they currently are?
Tradition maybe? Bible flannel graphs? End times debacles and Armageddon tales?
But if what I know about my God, the Creator, is true, then He is currently making all things new. Without obliterating them first.
Which means, speaking directly into my situation, He is making me new.
Which means, He is making Ty new too. Right now.
That's when the tear broke the dam of responsibility.
I am not responsible for my husband’s holiness. God is.
At the time, his sin seemed way worse than mine, because, well, I had a scale by which I measured them. No matter my good intentions. Up until that point, I was so focused on purging him and "helping him," I lost sight of him. I was so focused on thehim sin was clinging to and not the him God created. The eternal parts of him. The parts that matter.
The husband. The musician. The artist. The man of his word. The integrity. The loyal. The steadfast. The committed. The fighter. The hard-worker. The warrior. The victor.
Focusing on the temporal was prohibiting my view of the eternal. The beautiful, magnificent, mind blowing eternal. (Click it to tweet it.)
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This is why I wept. I started to get uncomfortable with the silence because my thoughts were so far ahead of me, into a territory of faith and grace I'd only wished for, and I was afraid to talk about it. Especially with my husband.
Why? Because he knew me. He knew my prones and wanderings. He knew my fear and my lashes.
And what I was mulling over for the last hour had gone from curious contemplation to a big-huge-marriage-turning confession.
Babe, are you ok? He asked.
No, I'm not okay. I need to apologize to you for the last three years.
I was faking forgiveness as best I could. I tried to control situations and circumstances as "preventative" measures for this man of God I'd married. And while I liked to think it was all for him, it was actually because I was terrified of losing my fairytale. My Christian fairytale.
Until the lake.
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I'm sorry, I mustered through the ugly crying. I'm so sorry for only seeing the temporal ugly fading parts of you and completely missing the eternal parts of you. I'm sorry for holding so tightly to your holiness and not giving you freedom in our marriage. I'm sorry for holding your sin over your head in the most Christian way possible.
I'm done. No more. I want to be a safe place for you from this moment forward.
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That day, we were set free. Again.
And now that I think about it, I'm going to refer to that day as our second marriage.
We committed again. We laughed again. And we continued on our marital journey with fresh faces and clean hands.
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