The Great Adventure

Last year around this time you beat me to the punch in expressing love, joy, appreciation and gratefulness to God for our marriage. Tomorrow morning will make 12 years for us. When we said yes to one another before God and witnesses August 7th, 1999, little did we know all the other things we would be saying "yes" and "no" to as a result of God's gracious leading. I remember August 9th of '98, hearing you, and then John Lockler and wondering, is it her. Indeed it was and it is.

I love the woman you were and I love all the more the woman you have become and are becoming. Such a beautiful picture of transformation you are, and you continue to be, praise God. Not that either of us has already attained it, but forgetting what lies behind, and pressing toward what lies ahead, we strive to lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus laid hold of us, namely we look heavenward to the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

When, by His grace we have considered Him, He has taken us places we never imagined we would go, and by His grace I can only imagine that He will take us places we have yet to see. I love how God is conforming you into the image of Jesus, the very thing you were predestined for before the foundation of the world. I love how your chief allegiance is to Christ and his Kingdom, and how you really do want his will to be done and for his Kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven. I love how you love and care for me and our children, and the vulnerable children of the world; how you you laugh at the days to come and how you care for this home through consistent labors of love and through the gifts He has put in you. I love your outward appearance, but I won't say anything saucy about how hot you are in this post because you don't like that sort of talk on the web, and I love that about you too!

I love how you love things that God says he loves and I love how you are concerned for people and issues that His word tells us concern him, and must concern his people. I love how you cannot help but testify about what you have seen and heard. I love how what you have seen and heard impacts you for His glory, and for people's joy. I love the way that you think. I love the way that you smell. You still surpass them all, and you always will. I love the three children He has given us so far, and I love that He has given them to us. I pray, with you that He graciously grants us another. I pray that our heart for the world grows more like his as the years go by, and I pray that if, by his grace, we grow old, that we will be like the palms of Psalm 92, "still bearing fruit in old age, full of sap and green, declaring the uprightness of God." I thank God that you are Laura Bowers and I praise Him for this great adventure that continues. This is a little old school, compared to your song last year, but you know that a guy who catches alligators and chases elk will think Dancing in the Mine Fields is a Great Adventure. I still love you, and I love you more than I did then. Thank you Laura, may He give us 48 more!