My hubby, my strength

This Wednesday, November 30th, my hubby, Micah, and I will celebrate our 9th anniversary. As I try to wrap my head around writing a blog post to honor and celebrate the man God brought to my life, I simply get lost in a sea of thoughts and different directions I could take this...I have so much I could say. As I wrap my heart around this post, however, I am simply draw to an overwhelming sense of precious pride and thankfulness that I would be so honored to be his wife.

Micah and I met while working on full-time staff at Camp Friedenswald in November 2001. Our relationship moved quickly from that of co-workers, to friends, to dating in one month's time. We were engaged 4 months later and married 7 months after that...just 1 year and 4 days after ever laying eyes on one another. Some say that's crazy fast, but we were living camp life together--eating meals together, working together, and living on the same camp grounds so our relationship had plenty of time to grow quite deeply in that setting. We connected on many levels...we were both Christians trying to place God first in our lives, we had both experienced intense grief in our past (Micah losing his mom to cancer at age 6 and I losing my college fiance to a work accident at age 19), we both believed in and enjoyed camping ministry, we both had sisters (Micah-4 of them, me-1 of them), and...well...we both thought the other one was hot stuff so we spent countless hours in conversation and infatuation with each other. It was when life, as complicated as it seemed at the time, was really quite simple for us to fall in love with each other.


Our first years of marriage were not the honeymoon phase and wedded bliss everyone seems to think marriages experience. We found out quickly how selfish of people we were and we butted heads...a lot. As much as we had in common, we had as much different from one another too. I am an organized, factual, goal setting, to-do list type of woman. Micah is a relaxed, more last minute, needs-meeting, easy-going type of man. I'm doing something every minute of the day while feeling guilty I can't get more done than what I am while Micah could be found sleeping on a couch not feeling guilty at all. We are both stubborn, but in different ways. I had to be "right" about everything and as much as he wanted to be right/was right on things too, he all to often gave in to me just to stop the argument. It was hard. Our newly found love for one another seemed always on edge.

At this same time Micah was finding out his calling was not to camping ministry, but instead to nursing. As I reflect back, I think this was maybe the first major way God began to build us into people who could make this marriage work. There is something to be said about finding your natural, God-given gifts and talents and working from them. The frustrated and slightly depressed man I was living with began to change. Micah is meant to be a nurse and our marriage has benefited from his obedience to following that call. Micah has since been working in the nursing field, specifically with cancer patients, at IU Health Goshen and it has breathed life into him. I choke up just thinking of the countless patients who have been blessed because of his care...not just for his nursing skills, but because of the genuine care and love he has for them. He does an amazing job at meeting their needs and I am blessed because I know when he leaves this home in the morning, he is leaving for a place of work where he will be consistently fulfilled and come home tired, but content and happy to have done the work he did that day.

As far as our family...I am not raising these children alone, that is for stinkin' sure. There are moments I simply have to take a step back and reflect on how incredibly blessed I am to have a man who not only wanted to be a husband and father, but wanted to be the most active husband and father he can be. He regularly contributes to our home life...he doesn't come home and take a nap or read a newspaper or check out for a while. He jumps right into the wrestling matches on the floor with the boys or allows Lily to show him all her school papers from the day. He begins cutting veges for supper or filling water cups and getting the kids' plates ready. He is greeted by running children with open arms for hugs and typically a frazzled wife breathing a huge sigh of relief to see him because she knows her man is home for the evening. He is not perfect, friends, but no one is. Micah is amazing to us here in this Thieszen family and we would be lost without him. Here are some more pics showcasing just how special he is to us here on the homefront...

There is so much more I could say about Micah, but I wanted to focus lastly on the way I have seen this amazing man of God grow in spiritual maturity and depth in these past 9 years. He is far from the man I married. I married a sinful man who was broken under years and years of wounds and hurts with no direction and no hope to beat anything. (He married the same type of woman by the way). But somewhere between a new career, 4 locations we've called home, scary times like when we almost lost Toby, joyful times of seeing all our kiddos enter the world, and all the realities of day-to-day married life, Micah has intently heard the still, small, quiet voice of God begging him to be freed from those sins and to find strength in who God has truly made Micah to be. He's not only just heard that voice, but he has searched it out, discovered it, thrown himself into it, and been changed because of it. Micah IS a man of strength. He is God's man of strength. He is my man of strength. He is the man I am so blessed to have my children look up to and call "Daddy". He is the man I am so blessed to be walking this road of adoption with. He is the man I am so blessed to have holding me up and supporting me as I have walked my own journey towards spiritual freedom in these last few years. He is the man I am blessed to have hand-in-hand and heart-in-heart with for the next MANY years to come. He is a man of strength.



No, we didn't really have that first year of honeymoon-wedded bliss, but I can tell you this--I am really glad that at 9 years into our marriage I feel like we are more in a honeymoon-wedded bliss than we were when we got married. It could so very easily have gone the other way and it didn't--we didn't. We chose us. We chose each other. We fought for us. We fought for each other. We EACH gave God the control of our ourselves and our marriage, forgave each other for all the wrongs we have done to one another, and are now solidly, joyfully, thankfully, and lovingly together today because of that. I love Micah more than anything else on this earth and he has my up-most respect. Thank You, God, for forever intermixing his life with mine....it's a gift I could never thank You enough for. Micah, I treasure you, I love you, and I am blessed because of you.