"9"

This isn't how many pairs of shoes I have (far less), or how many cars I've owned, or number of jobs I've held. It isn't the number of fabulous cities I've lived in or how many tacos I can eat(although pretty close). I like tacos.

In T minus seven days and counting, I will CELEBRATE nine years of marriage to Mr. Jackson. I feel like nine years is a huge accomplishment compared to Hollywood standards. Heck...being married nine years is like being married 20! Or 63 in dog years!

I've made lots of decisions during the long trek to adulthood. Which high school to attend, college, switching majors, places to live, ministries to serve, jobs, buying a house,...marrying Brent was the best adult decision I ever made. Or maybe better put, it's my favorite adult decision I've ever made!

It wasn't difficult. I had 'The List' that I'd created one afternoon in my dorm room. It contained all the qualities that I wanted my future husband to have. I prayed over this list, and even checked it against God's standards. I didn't want this to be some idealistic, dreamed-up standard that no man could reach. I also didn't want it to become an idol that clouded my judgement of what God had, or didn't have for me. I was often reminded of Song of Solomon 2:7:

Daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you by the gazelles and the does of the field:

Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires.

Once I wrote this down, I felt like I could release it to God, and put it away until a time of HIS choosing...which meant I had to accept that it might never happen. My contentment was in HIM and would rest there whether or not God gave me a husband in this world.

The funny thing is, I didn't realize that I had met my husband 20 years earlier. I knew who he was, where he lived, who his parents were, and what school he went to. We attended summer camps and saw each other every Wednesday and Sunday at church. I never would have imagined then, that I was looking into my husband's eyes; that I actually knew the person I had been blindly praying for all along.

I don't believe myself to be a hopeless romantic. I'm probably more accurately described as a skeptic. Or sarcastic. I laugh at chick flicks. There, I said it. Actually, all the odds were stacked against Mr. Jackson because I was riding on the coattails of 'I Kissed Dating Good-Bye.' No boys, no dating, no flirting. Buh-bye. He had his work cut out for him. But, he had his sunny-disposition, winning smile, love for Jesus and gentlemanly manners going for him. It was a simple handshake and hello on a Sunday morning.

Wanna keep going? Go HERE...