Happy Birthday!

Yesterday was my wife’s birthday anniversary. It was a joy to celebrate with her the gift of life that God has bestowed upon her and the gift of her life and love that He has bestowed upon me through her.

This celebration was also a reminder to me of the reality that I face every day, the reality that I can never be to her the husband that I desire to be. She does not fuss about this fact, but I do. I often ponder the frailty of my love and the impotence of my strength in providing for her.

I have often wondered how I would do if anything ever happened to her so that she truly depended upon me. Before we were married she had cancer. What if it should return someday and she depended upon me to care for her? What sort of husband would I be? When I consider the poverty of my current bestowal of love to her, I cower to consider how I could fail her if she ever really needed my love to be strong.

I am very grateful to know that my strength comes not from my internal fortitude but from the Lord. I also am very grateful that my wife knows this as well, both regarding my strength and hers.

How can I even properly account how blessed I am to have such a wife in the Lord? She tells me regularly that her greatest blessing and joy is in having a husband who preaches the Gospel. She speaks of her gratitude to God for the fact that I count the Gospel as the one thing necessary and that I spend my days searching the Scriptures so as to be able to direct her to that one necessary thing in her life and in our life together.

Can any man be more richly blessed?

Oh, what a happy birthday! Oh how wonderful that God has brought my wife into the world and has given her to me for as long as we both shall live.

Happy Birthday, Dear! Thank You, Lord!