The First Time I Saw Her

I still remember the first time I saw her. I realize that sounds like the first line of a cheesy rom com, but it’s true. I was sitting about four to five pews back on the left side of the sanctuary where the youth group kids always sat. My friends had told me that a couple girls they had met in the next town over were coming to this Sunday night service. Keep in mind this was 14 years ago so my memory is a little fuzzy, but I’m pretty sure that in typical teenage boy fashion I was excited to meet some new girls. It was just a few minutes before the service was going to start when they walked up the side aisle. This moment is not fuzzy in my memory, the moment Ashley walked into my life. I remember it clearly, not because it was “love at first sight,” but because, even then, I felt a significance to the moment. Of course, Ashley was beautiful, but as I have looked back on this moment over the years I can say that what I felt then was not merely an attraction but something deeper. Over the next couple years we would first become good friends before we started dating. And then about six and a half years from that first meeting she would walk down the next aisle over and become my wife.

It has been a wonderful seven years since that day. It is hard to believe that it has been almost seven years ago since we graduated college and got married. I often still feel more like the 22 year old groom instead of an almost 30 year hold husband and father. I might have finally begun to have some understanding of how this life is but a vapor that passes away quickly and is gone. These past seven years seem to have passed in the blink of eye, and they were full of joys and sorrows, blessings and trials, mountain tops and valleys. Through it all the Lord has been more than faithful, pouring out abundant grace and blessing on my life, and the primary means he has done so has been through Ashley. I look at her now and marvel at the wife and mother she has become and is becoming. I know she is not where she desires to be, nor am I. We both want to be godlier spouses, parents, church members, and friends. Yet the Lord has saved us and he will finish the work he has begun. He is finishing it, and I see it in the patience and love that Ashley displays even though she has not slept through the night since September 17, 2014. She humbly works hard as a stay at home mom along with several side jobs to earn some extra money. She also daily endures my weaknesses and failings. The Lord has abundantly blessed Grayson and I, and with Mother’s Day approaching I wanted to share this blessing publicly and give God the glory for saving Ashley and making her a wife and mother. Happy Mother’s Day, Ashley! Grayson and I love you and know that I’ll never forget that first moment we met.