10 Things Thursday: Husband Edition

On one of my favorite blogs, Women Living Well, there's a new challenge about marriage until Valentine's Day. I recommend it, and have been pretty convicted about my marriage and my husband in the past week. Ooh, the sermon last night was part of it - the story of Isaac and Rebekah - what a sweet story of faith, love and God's providence that is.

Because of that, "my gift is my song, and [Adam] this one's for you."

1. I love that he pursued me the way he did. He couldn't remember my name, but he always came to say hi to me, and he asked me out for my birthday. He was thoughtful, sweet, respectful, chivalrous and transparent. We both had baggage, and we unpacked it together. We got to know each other on the phone separated by an ocean, and looking back, our relationship was perfectly ordained by God.
2. I told him this earlier this week, before this challenge - I love his sense of humor. He can always make me laugh, and I genuinely think that he is funny. We have inside jokes that are so inside, I don't think we could explain most of them to anybody.
3. I love holding his hand and kissing him. I love when he puts his arm around me. I love when he rubs my head while we watch TV. I love that when he hugs me and Charlotte sees us, she gets mad that she's not involved in our hug. :)
4. I love that he's a homebody, like me. When it comes down to it, we both like being at home. We're not world travelers, we're not adventure seekers. We love being at home doing nothing with each other. And I love that about us.
5. I love that he is learning to take the lead. We did not enter into marriage with any idea of biblical roles: biblical womanhood, biblical manhood, biblical parenting, biblical family-ness, nothing, so coming into our roles has been a challenge. Sadly, this is often the case in our society. But, seeing him grow in his leadership role is encouraging, and spurns me on to grow in my homekeeping, helping, caring, soothing role. He falters sometimes, as we all do, but God's sanctification and conviction in his life is evident and encouraging.
6. I love that I am still the only one for him. His heart has never wandered, never for a second, and whenever he is in a compromising position, he chatters nervously about me. He never wishes that I would be any different than I am, physically, or any other way. Cliche or not, he loves me just the way I am, and there is great comfort and security in that.
7. I love that he dragged me out of bed this morning. Not at the time, but I love that he can be bossy, firm or blunt when he needs to be. I need that sometimes (don't we all?), and he provides by irritating me at the time for my own good later on.
8. I love the man he is becoming. When we got married (as I said earlier), we had no idea what we were getting into. We were just blithely skipping into marriage, and though divorce was never an option for us, we really had no eye on the future of the committment that we were making. I think that's partly natural, like becoming a parent for the first time: there's no real way to know what you're getting into until you're in it. But our marriage could have been a disaster after a couple years, and instead God's grace was sufficient to build it up for His glory. Praise Him for that.
9. I love how he is as a dad. Of course he was going to be a great dad - he teaches elementary school and is really just a big kid himself. But I'll admit that when he told me that Charlotte was a girl after she had been born, I asked him if that was okay with him. :) He is a great dad for a girl to have: he roughhouses with her, but not too hard, he reads her the Bible every night before bed, and he spanks her with purpose and not with anger when she's disobedient. He's a really great dad, and he will be such a blessing to our child(ren).
10. Last, but not least, he likes to do what I like to do. We like the same movies and shows, we play family video games together, we both think that cable TV is a total waste. There's a line in the movie High Fidelity that "it's about what you like, not what you are like" and with us, we're on the same page. Honestly, for most of our relationship, we have been on the same page, about big and small things alike, and that is a true testament to God's grace in all things, big and small. Soli Deo Gloria.