a time for celebration

These are just a few Instagram shots from our anniversary get-away.

They can’t begin to capture the joy my heart felt being with my husband…thinking back on all God did to bring us together…still feeling like I was dreaming it all…

It was certainly a time for celebration.

Of thankfulness.

Of praise to the Only One. The One and Only.

Of happiness.

Of more than happiness…joy.

I have never felt love this deep. This strong. So strong that some times I feel like my heart is going to burst. And it’s not just mushy-gushy love…although there’s plenty of that 😉 … it’s a love that I can’t even put into words.

A lay-my-life down kind of love. A nothing-can-quench-this kind of love. A love that reaches so deep…so far… I understand a little more now how marriage is a picture of Christ’s relationship with the Church…of the love that led Him to the cross to save us.

I’ll never completely understand it. Or comprehend it. Or be able to wrap my human mind around it.

But I’ve had a glimmer of understanding since I met Matt. Since we fell in love and he pursued my heart and loved me and cared for me in a way that I had never experienced. Since he  asked me to marry him and met me at the end of the aisle on our wedding day and walked me back up that aisle into a new life. Since he has continued to pursue me and love me and care for me over this last year in the most gentle of ways…holding my heart like it is the most precious thing on earth to him. His love for me takes my breath away.

And it shows me Christ. And that’s my glimmer of understanding. The constant living out of a love that would lay down its life for another. The love Matt has for me.

Oh, I could write forever. But it would always come back to one thing – God’s great mercy. How great it is. How all-encompassing. How gentle and so full of passionate love at the same time.

I’m sitting in Starbucks as I type this… reminiscing…remembering…thanking God all over again for Matt, for us, for our weekend of celebration…and “At Last” sung by Etta James just started playing…

At last. My love has come along.

My lonely days are over.

And life is like a song.

At last. The skies above are blue.

My heart was wrapped up in clover the night I looked at you.

I found a dream that I could speak to. A dream that I can call my own. 

I found a thrill to press my cheek to. A thrill that I have never known.

You smile, you smile, oh, and then the spell is cast.

And here we are in heaven. For you are mine.

At last.