What "Every Good and Perfect Gift" Includes

This man with crisp white shirt and tie, the one who sits to the side, in the back of most every social event or party, his head tucked down in silent humility, realizing he doesn't know more than he knows and what he does know isn't as important as what he doesn't know.This man who spends an afternoon lifting our youngest son high over his head to do what Emerson would otherwise be unable to do--make that basket. Son grins, giggles, and runs after the ball before running back to his daddy who lifts him once again.
This man whose shirt bleeds red with sweat mingled clay as he chips through Louisiana concrete late into the night, trench only lit by lanterns as he works on an outside office so he can spend less time commuting and more time home with his wife and children.
This is the man God wrapped in a simple college desk and sent me fifteen years ago. Four years later, this is the man I swore before God and family to love and cherish.

Even now, after, in the midst of the everything of life, when I can't lift myself off my knees, can't even lift my eyes from the wood planks...it is then that I am in awe, once again, at the man my heavenly Father has given me to serve as my helpmate.

When I said "I do," my younger self really had no idea of what it meant for the man she loved to be created for her. I had no idea how he would step up where I lacked, how my flaws would be tempered by his strengths, how he would be what I needed without my even knowing there was a need...how something as silly as his love of my feet was just part of God's overall plan to help me, the woman whom the masseuse says holds tension in her feet.

Tonight I stand in awe of my Father who created this man for me, a Father who gives me every good and perfect gift.