Italy, Cancun, and Sauder Village...10 Years and Counting!

Marriage.

What would you say if you could sum up marriage in one word?  Perhaps it would be "challenging".  Maybe "amazing".  Possibly "stretching".  Then there is always "love", "sacrifice", "compromise", "happiness", "grace", "hard", "hilarious", "brokenness", "commitment" and an infinite list of others.  I'm going to go so bold as to say the word I've been mulling over in my head for my own marriage.  It's..."perfect".  I know, I know, no marriage is "perfect" and nothing aside from Christ alone can be perfect this side of Heaven, but let me explain why I'm choosing this word.

No, I don't think everything about my marriage is perfect.  I am not perfect.  Micah is not perfect.  The events in our day-to-day life are not perfect.  Our actions and reactions towards each other are not perfect.  But what is perfect is the fact that a perfect God brought us two crazy, incomplete, holy, loved, broken, and valuable people together to go through life beside.  God's plan of pulling us together was and still is certainly perfect after 10+ years of being together and that is what makes my marriage perfect...everything else involved NEEDS His perfection infused daily to keep it all together.

November 30th is fast approaching and Micah and I will celebrate 10 years of being united under the vows of marriage.  10 years of learning, growing, shedding tears--of joy as well as sadness.  10 years of building each other up and, unfortunately, at times bringing each other down.  10 years of bringing out each others' strengths as well as weaknesses to work on.  10 years of sharing accomplished dreams and our worst nightmares.  10 years of imperfect people living with a perfect Lord guiding us along the journey = 10 years of marriage perfection.

When we first got married we naively said we would take our dream trip to Italy for our 10 year anniversary.  Ha!  10 years seemed like such a long time off...we would have plenty of time to save up the money and then whisk ourselves away to a romantic time together amongst the beauty and richness of Italy.  Then came the purchase of our dog, a change in career choices for Micah that meant more schooling, a move from Friedenswald to Goshen, a career change for me, a hospitalized kidney infection for me, the birth of our first child, the purchase of our first house, a totaled vehicle and purchase of our new-to-us van, the birth of our second child, emergency heart surgery on that second child, gall bladder surgery on me, the birth of our third child, preschool for our first child, a medical mission trip to Haiti, the sale of our first home and purchase of our second one, the need for a second vehicle (a.k.a. piece of crap), too much maintenance on that piece of crap second vehicle, and then the sale of that vehicle and purchase of a different and better new-to-us second vehicle.  Whew!  Italy wasn't looking too realistic come year 8 of marriage.

So, Italy got put on the back burner.  We narrowed down our focus to a more realistic choice...Cancun.  Yes!  Cancun it would be.  A week of luxury and alone time for me and my man along the shores of the beautiful ocean.  Ahhhh.....  Then came the decision to answer God's call to adopt, the expenses to see that adoption actually happen and preschool for our second child.  Hmm....Cancun???  Well, as much as we still wish it would be a reality, it just isn't.  Without knowing the length of the rest of Nora's adoption we can't risk spending that extra saved money on a week in luxury.  So, just as Italy got put on the back burner, Cancun also got put on the other back burner, but that doesn't mean Micah and I will not get to celebrate our anniversary in a special way.

Thanks to my parent's willingness to watch their adorably cute grandkids for an overnight, Micah and I will get to spend a night at the Heritage Inn on the grounds of Sauder's Village in Archbold, Ohio.  Yep, Sauder's Village...the place I went to as a kid for a field trip-ha!  No, it's not the romance of Italy or the warm climate of Cancun, but it will still be a time for just the two of us to spend together.  Maybe we'll spend our time reflecting back on our 10 years of a perfect marriage of two imperfect people.  Maybe we'll take a walk around the grounds of the village.  Maybe we'll...well, sleep.  No matter what we do, we will enjoy every single second of that quality time away together.  The reality of marriage is not that two lives get whisked away to enjoy each other every second of every day with no regard to the world around them.  It's more like two lives coming together and living those lives as one life instead--a life full of busy, hectic, wonderful, crazy moments.  It's a life that comes with many, many things that change the course of a planned future....a life that changes trips from Italy, to Cancun, to Sauder's Village.

Is that changed future any less exciting, romantic, blessed, or free?  Not really.  Maybe the vacations and breaks are not as long and not as far away, but the tradeoff is priceless.  I would NEVER trade in Micah becoming a nurse using his God-given talents to help cancer patients who desperately need his sense of humor and care for a trip to Cancun or even a trip to Italy.  I would never trade in any of my 4 precious children.  I would never trade in the memories made in our two homes.  I would never trade in the health of my family.  I would never trade in the journey of adoption.  I would never trade in 10 years of a perfect marriage guided by a perfect God for what we assume would be the "perfect" anniversary get-a-way.  The life we have lived over the past 10 years as a married team is far too amazing...far too beyond my dreams.  I'll gladly take my overnight to Sauder's Village instead.

I am blessed.  I was blessed before I met Micah.  I am blessed to have met and married Micah.  I am blessed to have the life I live.  I am blessed to be celebrating our 10 year anniversary with an overnight at a local inn.  I am even more blessed because a God who loves me, cares for me, and lives with me each and every moment of my life has made it all perfect for me.

10 years and counting, Babe.  I love you so very much.  I respect you more and more and more each day we are together.  You have enriched my life by simply being you.  Thank you, Micah!  We have so many more years together--eventually we'll get to Cancun and to Italy, I just know it.  Here's to 10 years and to making the movies jealous...

(Sorry about the quality of some of those earlier photos in the video...they are photos taken of photos in my early scrapbooks.)

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.