Happy Anniversary Gayle!

The greatest gift of my life has been the gift of Jesus Christ. He saved and transformed me, not because of me and what I did nor because of my merit or goodness, but because of His unyielding love and sacrifice for me. That is a gift without rivals and a gift that can only be given by God Himself.

But second on the list is my precious wife, Gayle. And she too is a gift from God. From a human standpoint our "chance" meeting over 18 years ago was absolutely improbable. But from God's vantage point it was another piece of the puzzle of amazing grace that He was putting together in my life.

I often tell Gayle that I was in love with her from the first week that I met her. And she likewise always says that she was not nearly  that quick on the draw. When we were dating we were separated by almost 200 miles (and as she would say, almost 8 years!), but thankfully with some time (and heavy doses of my charm!) she began to see the light!

We both became Christians about a month before our wedding and the presence of Christ in our marriage has made all of the difference in the world. It has been amazing not just to "grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ" as an individual, but to be able to do so with the one that you walk through life with.



The Heart and Hands of a Servant:
Gayle helping our neighbor wrap sheep
intestines around the lining of a
sheep's stomach before they cook it.

Our life together has not exactly gone as we scripted it in those first few years of marriage, but one of the mind-blowing things about Gayle is that she has always been great with where God has taken our family and our lives. She was okay when we left our "careers," sold our dream home, and took our two-month-old son and moved to Kentucky for me to attend Bible college. She was okay because she trusted God and (for this I am eternally grateful and overwhelmingly amazed) she trusted me. Later, when we moved even father away from family and familiarity to serve in Idaho she was equally happy and content. Very early in our marriage she once told me, "I am okay wherever we are because the Lord will be there and you will be there." She has always just wanted to be where the Lord would have our family be. And now we live in a rural village in southern Senegal for the sake of the  Gospel and the unreached peoples here. I have watched her travel this long road to Africa with great joy and thorough resolve as she seeks to be faithful to God's call.

Gayle has always been my biggest "fan" and has always supported me in everything. That has been a huge blessing as we have sought to serve the Lord and His church together for the last decade. But she has supported me enough and with such love and thoroughness that she has never shied away from lovingly telling me when I was wrong or when I needed to think more deeply about something. She has consistently mixed overwhelming love with solid truth in our relationship and I am surely a better man because of her.

Indeed, I could go on and on with all of the ways that God has used Gayle to bless me and our family, but all of those roads lead me back to His grace. I am continually reminded of how undeserving I am of all of God's grace. I guess that is the great thing about grace: you get the overwhelming blessing that you do not deserve. And that is exactly what I got 17 years ago today  
when I married Gayle. Happy anniversary Gayle! Thanks for being the second best gift I've ever received!