9 years ago today life forever changed as I entered into a relationship with the most amazing woman on the planet. (yes, I am totally biased) I still remember the feelings, thoughts, and emotions as the final days counted down, the hours crept by, and I took those last few steps alone to the marriage altar. There was all this waiting, this anticipation, for the opportunity to say… “I do” and join myself in unison with a women for the rest of my days.

They say “love blinds a person” and I totally agree. I never thought I could love the way I do, yet I equally never knew that love was such a progression. I still have so much to learn about love, being a husband, leading a family, but one thing I have come to know is that love has always required action.

I recently discovered that in biblical times, there was no special term for “promise”.

the closest biblical term DABAR meant… word, speech, command, action.

There are so many people who enter a relationship/covenant with another person based upon a “promise” they made to each other in front of people. “Words” that can be spoken with great intentions, yet equally with great shallowness. If we were honest we could say that most people rarely keep their word in todays culture anyways. The crazy thing is that “words” didn’t have that much weight bibilcially in marriage either. Upon further understanding we find that when this term (dabar) was used biblically, historically, and before us the picture it created was to “keep your word by pragmatic action”!

Action? There’s an idea. Could it really be that marriage takes action? Over 9 years I have have LEARNED to love a women who has become my partner, my help mate, and my equal. Oh, there are times when we try to change each other, times when we think one of us is above the other, and times when we think we don’t know if we can take each other anymore That’s the honest, life changing lessons LEARNED as marriage progresses. Those are the moments and times when we have grown to realize that our “action” speaks louder than any “words” we could actually say. We realize in those moments that there’s more of a sacredness to the way we live with each other, than some “sacred” word we can spit out before each other.

I reflect today upon these past 9 years and I remember the times when we thought that “love conquers all”. I remember the times when we could fix the little things and times when we needed help from others to actually make it through those harder ones. All moments learned as we were willing to take pragmatic action in growing to love each other in greater ways than we had loved each other the day before.

I love how one writer explained the picture of marriage when he said;

A study of marriage and the family particularly reveals that all people are a mix of strength and weakness, good and evil, faithfulness and failure – Marvin Wilson (Our Father Abraham)

I have learned these past 9 years that I have been privileged to enter a beautiful relationship with a women that I have grown more in love with 9 years, or 3,285 days, or 78,840 hours later… than the first day I met her.

I sit here realizing she has been just about everything I could need, want or desire in these past 9 years, and am equally baffled at how I will grow to understand even greater things years from now just by being beside her.

Truth is… this new place we find ourselves (starting a church) could never had been possible unless my soul mate had been just as ready for it as I needed to be. Just over 365 days ago I found myself after years of wrestling with God praying in repetition…

“God if you want me in this place of leadership, would you let me hear the trumpet sound?”

This was a constant prayer of mine. Then late one night at the dinner table last September I was stunned as my wife uttered the words;

“it’s time to do what God is asking us of us. We won’t ever be completely ready, but I believe we are as ready as we can be. We just needed some help from others, some time to learn, and some time to grow to find ourselves at this place”.

In short she had said “we just needed to take ACTION in a few areas” to get us to this point in life together.

I remember looking across the table at one who I had spent years trying to understand. Gazing into the eyes of one whom I had spent the greatest moments of life with and some of the hardest. And in one moment at that point, she had become more than I had ever expected. I had learned to see her as my partner, begun to understand that she was my equal, but never thought she would be the “sounding trumpet” that God would use in his call to this place.

Our counselor (yes couselor, I told you we are willing to do whatever to make our relationship stronger) often told us one simple thing about marriage;

“LOVE WELL”.

Funny thing is that I have just begun to discover after 9 years of spending my life together with someone what this phrase could actually mean. It’s not something that looks good on the cover of a book, not something you just say, but it’s a way of actively living with another to do all things necessary for the greater good of the other. Anything less is a misguided understanding of what it takes for two people to grow through life together. Anything less is just… “words”.

9 years into this Tandy Grandstaff has become the person that I will do anything and everything possible to “LOVE WELL”. Oh, I will mess up. I will fall short. I will get lost at times. But I didn’t stand before friends, family, and my God to spit out shallow words, I stood before a woman who I planned to actively love till death departed us.

“LOVE WELL” takes just that. Two people actively pursuing all means to learn, grow and journey through life together. Two people willing to fight for each other and learning what it means to “die to self”. All this so that the journey of marriage may unfold new ways to love each other.

A person recently shared with me that the success for life looks like this;

1. God first
2. Your marriage second
3. Yourself at the very bottom of the list

I believe that if I follow this, I can’t go wrong! Even though I will mess it up at times My marriage is the most important thing I have entered outside of my relationship with God and today I am just fortunate enough to celebrate 9 years with someone who is wise enough to understand this often more quicker than I

I love you Tandy and can’t wait to see the new things we actively discover in life together.