22 Years and a Million Miles

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"I need to tell you what I was really doing before I met Jesus, my wife," I said, terrified that she might walk out of my life when she heard the whole Truth.

I went on to tell my wife of the full extent and every detail of my past addictions to drugs, alcohol, pornography and my habitual lying. She knew much of it, of course, but not the extent to which these bondages had controlled my life until 6 months before when I had finally and truly surrendered my life to Christ.

She sat on the bed, looking me in the eye as I shared who I had become over the years since my childhood, and since the first time we had met some 9 years before. When you're asking someone for forgiveness for such grave injustices, such dark sins against them, you look at their face intently. You're looking for any twitch, and facial expression that might indicate how they're taking what you're saying. But my wife just looked at me calmly and listened to what I was sharing. Her countenance never wavered.

When I was finished, I said, "I truly believe that this is everything, and I need to ask you to forgive me." She looked at me as I will never forget, and I realized before she ever spoke that she had truly and from the bottom of her heart already forgiven me. She said... (Click on the "Read More!" link below) "My husband, I never prayed that you would stop doing any of those things. I only prayed that you would come to know Jesus, and that you would walk with Him for all of your days."

She then showed me computer disks that contained her daily prayers, prayers that she had typed into her computer as she prayed, prayers she offered on my behalf every day for almost 7 years. I read on the screen and saw that she had prayed exactly what she said she'd been praying for all those years. And I was stunned by the magnitude of her faith in God, and of her forgiveness for me.

And so, surrounded by a love like that, I took the hand of my wife and walked with her and Jesus.

Yesterday, we celebrated our 22nd wedding anniversary, but it is not the date of our wedding that we celebrate. My wife and I celebrate 22 years and a million miles.

We celebrate the Journey which He first purposed for us before the foundations of the universe. We celebrate the lessons learned together, the wrongs forgiven each other, the moments experienced as one, and 22 years and a million miles that we have shared with Christ and one another.

We celebrate living in a present moment that is the product of every step of that Journey.

We celebrate the knowledge that, for as long as we have breath, we will never be divided from one another. For God has allowed us to live within a temple made one out of two by His Holy Spirit. No one else treads there but us and God. No one else is allowed. Ours is a sacred bond lived out in a sacred place.

Looking back, we realize that the degree of the cloistered, spiritual intimacy that my wife and I share is directly proportionate to the "miles" we have walked together. Every mile has had a price and a blessing. Every mile is etched with vivid meaning and color upon our collective memory. Every mile speaks to us from within that collective memory as a testimony to His grace and mercy, and to the love which He alone has placed within us for Him and one another.

And so, I share with you today that, being one with Him and with her, I am the very least of this equation. Deserving nothing, I have been blessed beyond compare by both of them, because they desired to give to me. Deserving rejection, I have been made one with both of them, because they desired it to be so.

I give testimony of that love to you this day with these words. I have those words for you.

But toward my God and my wife, the capability of words passed long ago. The capability of words has faded with the miles, melting away into something fearfully wondrous in its depth and magnitude.

For them, I no longer have any words.

Rather their deep looks into my deep, and they just know.

Today, look again, my wife, and know.