Thanksgiving Thoughts

We are the couple who shouldn’t have made it. My husband and I married right out of high school when I was eighteen and he was twenty. Apparently, we didn’t look that old, though. When we checked in the motel for our honeymoon the woman behind the desk asked if we were twelve and thirteen.

When most people our ages were pursuing college and careers—worthy pursuits of course—we were adjusting to married life. We decided to postpone higher education and eight months later, my husband joined the Army and left for basic training followed by a year long stint in South Korea. He came home on leave during the chaos that followed 9/11 to see our first son born in September 2001. In the next five years we had two more sons and my husband completed his degree.

Three boys and almost eleven years later, I look back and marvel. By society’s standards, we did everything backwards. We’re the couple people thought wouldn’t make it. We’re the couple with three kids instead of the average 1.87. (Not sure I'd want .87 kids, but that's just me.) We’re the couple who should be scraping though life. However, I see God’s fingerprint in it all—His abundant faithfulness.

Who are we really? The family God has blessed with three fun, energetic boys. The family God has provided for time and again—leaving us with no school debt, no vehicle payments, and no late or unpaid bills. This is even more amazing considering that since the birth of our first child we’ve been a single income family.

At the same time, I realize it’s not because of anything we’ve done. We have seen our share of struggles and walked through our share of wildernesses. We are not blessed because of any good in ourselves. Honestly, knowing myself as I do, I wonder why in the world God would ever choose to favor us. Surely, I am an unlikely candidate for His grace and mercy.

On the eve of Thanksgiving, I cannot help but cry out with a thankful heart to the One who has walked with us all along. The One who has blessed us. The One who has healed us. The One who has touched us. The One who has been near to us. He has brought us through times of deep darkness and celebrated over us during seasons of joy.

I recently stumbled across an old notebook from April 1999 where my husband had jotted down his thoughts. According to his record, when we married, he had been working full time and made $6.70 an hour. I had been working part time and made $5.25 and hour. I looked at my husband and wondered, “What were we thinking? How were we paying our bills? How did we make it this far?”

His reply: “Only by the grace of God.”