Adamant Love

Our eyes met across a crowded room on a Friday in the early Fall of 2004. I was a nursing student, months from graduation. Mark was a tall, handsome stranger with a British accent and a theology degree. He was in the States doing evangelistic mission work with college students. We chatted very briefly, and he was gone into the night. A mutual friend offered to pass along my phone number, and hope shimmered on my horizon.

24 hours later, I discovered a lump in my neck. Due to a family history, I knew immediately what I had found. The morning of our first date I sat in the doctor’s office, charting a course that would confirm my suspicion: cancer had made a home in my body.

As devout Christians, we took dating seriously, and from the start we sought the Lord’s will for ourselves individually and as a couple. If it weren’t for this foundation of trust in the Lord, the news of my cancer that I shared with Mark only weeks later might have crumbled the hope of our relationship. 

Fortunately, the cancer, Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, was highly treatable. As we navigated the world of chemo-infusion dates and hair loss, our conversations centered on vision and the call the Lord had placed on each of our lives. As the months progressed, we reached a certainty that marriage was in our future. On a gray spring day in 2005 Mark proposed and I accepted. Eight months later, I, a cancer-free bride with an inch of hair, walked down the aisle in front of 500 friends and family from all over the world, to celebrate the God who led us from sickness to health, and our union that only death will part.  

Shortly after our wedding, we again heard the Lord calling us, and we moved from Michigan to Minnesota. Mark’s salary as a missionary, and my convalescence as a cancer survivor meant our income was scanty. We couldn’t even afford a shoebox of a house, and our dreams of an eventual family would be a squeeze in our one-bedroom apartment. In a new way, we had to place our trust in him who provides for those he loves, while they are asleep. (Psalm 127:2)

Coinciding with the news that our first baby was on the way, a position as a dorm chaplain at a local college became available. For two years, Mark wore a secondary hat as a chaplain, allowing us to live rent-free in a tiny dorm apartment. With this blessing, we were able to begin saving for a home. 

Living with 800 freshman boys was an adventure all its own, but nothing prepared us for the jolting launch into parenthood, when our son arrived unexpectedly prematurely. Again, the Lord was at work, forcing out the selfishness of our own time, space, and sleep as we cared for our preemie son. 

The following year, with baby number two on her way, we felt our dorm apartment closing in on us. We had grown our savings, but to afford a home the Lord would need to multiply our loaves and fishes, and he did: a foreclosure fell in our lap, the President offered a 1st-time homebuyer credit, the county we moved to offered grants for weatherization (including a new furnace) and a 0% interest renovation loan, and not least, our parents chipped in some gift money. 

Five wonderful years were spent in that home, but our desire for a large family and hospitality were too much for that house, and again we sought the Lord. After much searching and praying on our part, he gifted us a mansion on a cul-de-sac in the suburbs. Strangely, no one else wanted the severely water-damaged, five bedroom, six bathroom home on half an acre, but we had the experience of God’s lavish provision with our first home, and between that and our knack for diy, we moved, waking for our first day in our new home on Thanksgiving, 2014.

2015 started with two trips to the UK as Mark’s dad passed away, followed soon by the death of a family friend, Joe. If that weren’t enough, following three full-term births, baby number five, our second son, arrived even earlier than his older brother, spending nearly two months in the NICU. There was no greater example of love in that NICU season than when, just weeks after the death of her son, Joe’s mom came and cleaned all our bathrooms. We look back with weary exhaustion at that year, but the Lord provided the peace that passes understanding that guarded our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:7)

Five years on and approaching our 15th wedding anniversary, 2020 has again tested our foundation as the world turned upside down, but we have seen and known that Christ Jesus, the anchor of our hope, is trustworthy. Our family, now counting eight, continues to place our hope in him who can do immeasurably more than we ask or imagine. (Ephesians 3:20)