My Husband Has Tattoos

 I just read a beautiful blog post this morning called "My Wife Has Tattoos" and it reminded me so much of Jon and me and our story. Sadly, it took me a long time to get to the place of maturity in my Christian walk where I was able to say this.

I am so thankful that God had a man better than my dreams for me to marry. I was much like Spencer described himself in this blog post - a goody-two-shoe, judgmental Christian teenager who legitimately laughed when people told me that I would never find a man that met all of the criteria on my "list" (which included at that time, no tattoos, no alcohol-drinking, and definitely no drugs or sexual promiscuity in his past!).

Many people wouldn’t have put me and Jon together. In high school, we probably would not have been friends. I would have turned my nose up at him, and he would probably not have been interested in me either. As Spencer said of himelf and his wife Taylor,  "people like us, with our backgrounds and history are not supposed to meet, fall in love, and covenant their lives to each other. But everything changes when people meet Jesus.  Jesus takes people like rebellious teenage partiers, and goody-two-shoe homeschoolers and puts them together in marriage to put something on display much bigger than their own hand-crafted, perfectly planned love-story." 

Yesterday morning, I awoke to my sweet husband saying, "Happy fourth year engagement anniversary!" I looked at him kind of funny until I registered that it was April 25th - the day he got down on one knee four years ago and asked me to marry him. I couldn't believe that he remembered that. I certainly didn't! Four years ago - after much deliberation and repentance of my wrong, sinful patterns of thinking - I said "Yes", and I am so thankful that I did!

Today I am reminded again that God’s ultimate plan in putting Jon and I together is that he wants to uniquely put his grace on display for the world to see. I could have said "no" and walked away. I could have stayed in the sinful self-righteous rut I was in and listened to all the voices that said we were too different and just wrong for each other. But everything changes when people meet Jesus! He changed me and He changed Jon; He's still changing both of us. Grace changes everything!

I'm so thankful that I didn't marry the tattooless "man of my dreams". Jon is better than I could have dreamed. "Jonathan" means "Gift of God" and that is truly what he is to me. So thankful for God's grace in bringing us together.