I turned thirty over break.  Husband knew I was on the fence about being thirty so he surprised me with a trip home, a sweet hotel, and a party with my closest people.  We turned 34 months while we were in my city and we celebrated that, too.  Because still now every month feels huge, every month feels like a step closer to what we might be.  And still now we are learning to love in spite of our ugliness.

Marriage is the only human relationship I have known that beats out sin the way it does.  The longer you are with someone the more intimate you become with their sin struggle.  And 34 months in, it isn't a tidy his and hers thing.  34 months in, his sin is slapping against my heart and my sin is snapping right back and we're learning to forgive things we didn't know we would need to.  We're learning the weight of brokenness and the grace of shouldering each other in spite of the aching.  Sin is personal here.  Sin is calculating and dark and it has the power to steal away foundations, it has the power to undo great things and so we are lying in bed late at night and he is praying me to sleep.  I am on the couch memorizing Ephesians 5 and he is listening to The Kings on the way to work.  We are checking each other.  We are pushing each other.  We are driven by determination and yes, by fear.

Because of this: in one moment what was secure can leave and your heart can tighten, your breath can stop, your stomach can fall and there won't be words enough to cover that moment.  There will be his broken gaze and your screaming mind and you'll have to fight then to stay present.  You'll have a decision to make and forgiveness will finally feel like the weighty thing it is.  You'll celebrate Good Friday and Easter morning and you'll crumble again because you can't bear the relief of those days.  You can't fathom that kind of forgiveness because you are eight days working on finding the strength to forgive one shattering thing and He took all the sin ever committed on Himself and beat out it all in three.

The day before thirty I sobbed on the floor of our hotel room and he held me in a way I had not let him and in spite of sin we grew.  This is the miracle of grace.  This is the beauty of our God.  We are fumbling, fractured beings and still He redeems, over and over He saves and works us out into a clearer image of Him.  And my love for the man He made for me is larger and fiercer than before Because sin isn't big enough to destroy anything founded in Him.  Because grace always wins.  Because forgiveness is mightier than I had known.  

I spent my 29th year doing the hardest things.  I thought the power of the twenties would slow with the thirties.  I ran farther than I had.  I biked farther.  I went to the wildest state.  I spent months focusing on minimizing our lifestyle.  I took on the hardest job, planted my first garden, baked complicated things, lifted heavy weights.  I pulled husband along with me and we burnt ourselves out on my list.  I entered 30 tired and wobbly and still reeling.  And finally ready to lean on an all-powerful God, on the broken but good man He gave me and on this blessed assurance: Jesus is mine. Thirty is going to be good.