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I always hated when people would ask me to share my testimony…I always responded “well, I grew up in church so I don’t really have one…just always believed…nothing special..”  Nothing special, how funny, how dumb was I? Since I turned 30 I have had so many revelations about my life and who I am…who God created me to be. One of the greatest realizations I have had lately is my testimony…it is quite a testimony friends…and it’s quite special…so today, on my wedding anniversary, I am going to share a small portion of that testimony with you…gonna have to make it short because there is  A LOT to it…but Im going to sum it up as best as I can.

Since I can remember, my heart has always been for the unloved or the unnoticed. I grew up bringing home anything from stray dogs to lonely kids from school…personally, I felt like it was my job to do it…I have felt called from the start in that department. I never thought about my future husband growing up… I never worried about it or even dreamed about it but whoever it was going to be, had to understand that part of me…it was required that the man I married, share my heart and since this was a big chunk of it, I needed a life partner who knew my heart like his own.

I spotted his blue eyes from my drivers seat waiting at the car wash. Anxiously awaiting my turn so I could talk to him. My turn came and he gave me a discount on my carwash and added free pepsis with it so naturally, I thought he was totally into me as I was into him;)…turns out, they gave those free Pepsis to all their customers *sigh*. I brought up every person in my families car that day just to get a few more good looks at him and as I awaited for my last excuse to get cleaned, I told my best friend over the phone, “Im looking at the man Im going to marry”…

Justin was my first serious boyfriend. He was the first boy that would pull up in the front of my parents house to drop me off from our date and I would think it so strange that he felt a bit like my home too so there was an unnatural feeling of leaving home for home? He has just always been my home.

Obviously we were teenagers, so we were completely stupid. We were dumb and in love and we were sinners so we made a lot of mistakes and we made choices of the flesh…and so we ended up pregnant about a month before I graduated from high school. The night I took that test, Justin and I were in my friends big bathroom and he was pacing back and forth looking down at his fingers…I just stared in the mirror trying to literally blink myself awake from the dream I felt like I was in. I prayed then…for God to take this from me…for God to change it…make it better…fix what I had gotten myself into…to allow it to be a dream…but I didn’t hear back from Him…I didn’t all of a sudden have an answer to what we could do…I was alone it seemed and it was just me and Justin and this growing seed inside of me against the world.  We talked about running away, we talked about every single choice we had at that point…we came to no conclusions other than Justin would be the one to tell my dad…it was his one request and I was 100% ok with that since I didn’t want to be the one to kill my dad from the broken heart he would get after hearing the news. I remember thinking, how did I get here? I was so loved? Didn’t I come from Beaver Cleaver? Wasn’t my family perfect, my life? How did I put myself in this position…how did I not see what was coming…how was I so blind to consequences…I remember thinking “what would people think of us now?”

Justin took me home that night and I remember my parents had been out late so I got home before them and they assumed I was asleep upstairs when they had gotten home.  In reality, I couldn’t sleep and had watched “Legends of the Fall” 3 times in a row and all of a sudden it was morning. As I walked down stairs, I could see my mom cooking breakfast in the kitchen talking to my sister home from college saying “My cup just runneth over this morning…I feel so blessed and happy this morning”…cool…excellent…my mom is feeling wonderful and Im about to ruin everything….the guilt just took over to a whole other level. Keep in mind, I had not yet cried about this…I believe I was still in a bit of shock and denial…so I walked like a zombie to the kitchen and ate breakfast with the happy people of my village. lol…oh gosh…this is where it gets real interesting…

My dad asked me to come swing with him on the front porch after breakfast…so we go out to the swing and begin to go back and forth…the wind hitting our faces and a silence that I can remember so vividly to this day. In the quiet swinging with my dad…I began to feel the weight of my reality…it all of a sudden hit me…and right when it did my dad finally spoke and he said “Allie Rae, the Lord woke me up this morning and told me whats going on with you”…that’s when my heart broke into a million pieces and I began to cry uncontrollably…through the tears I thought “he probably thinks I got bad grades or something…he doesn’t really know what’s going on with me because there is no way that would be possible” so I felt even worse thinking “you don’t really know dad”…but then came the words that I will never forget in my entire life and to this day seems a bit crazy…my dad said “yes, the Lord woke me up this morning and told me you were pregnant”…followed by…”its going to be okay baby”… the dad I worried so much about crushing had heard from his own Heavenly Father to prepare him to wake him up that morning and tell him “Danny, it’s going to be ok”…we were sitting there in what was supposed to be the worst conversation any father/18 year old daughter could have that God had covered with redemption and assurance. I knew then that God had not left me…that I hadn’t done something so bad that He was done with me…He loved me so much that He showed me a miracle not even 24 hours later after begging him to save me from it. My dad has never, not once, ever shown hurt or pain or stress or heart ache from that decision that turned our worlds upside down…all I have ever received from him since that day has been grace and it was grace I didn’t deserve but isn’t that such a picture of Jesus?

We planned a wedding in a week and called all the family on both sides, extended and all to come to my parents backyard and watch the baby of the family get married a week after she graduated from high school. Everyone came. To this day, that was something that I still can’t get over. My family from all over got the call, they dropped what they were doing, they didn’t ask questions, they didn’t judge or scorn, they just came and witnessed my marriage with love and gifts and smiles. How good is my God that this is even playing out this way? I felt deserving of punishment and judgement but it was replaced with grace and encouragement? My wedding day is a bit foggy in my brain I have to admit… I truly feel like God was carrying me at that point but I do remember the love that day and I will take that with me forever.

My testimony of those first few years could go on and on forever so let me just sum it up and tell you, it wasn’t easy…there were many times that if we hadn’t had the prayer we had from others around us, there is no way we would have made it. It seriously could be catagorized as a miracle that we got through some of the years we got through… we were two kids who were still growing up and trying to raise another kid growing up! There were so many points throughout those years where I just thought this was it…this was how marriage was supposed to be and I just have to live with it but friends…you are MISSING OUT  if you are both settling for mediocre. God put a fire in both Justin and I that made us FIGHT for our marriage…we fought for more…we still do… we have never been left by God…He has shown us over and over that fighting for each other is better than anything we could ever do!

As simple as these next words may seem…I wish so badly you could step into my shoes for just a second to comprehend the love that overtakes my soul when I think about my husband and our life together. God redeems friends…he redeemed us…he makes things beautiful…He is never not there. It took so long for Justin and I to find out who we were, individually and together…and one of the most beautiful discoveries in our journey together is that we do, in fact, share the same heart. Our hearts break for the unloved, and the unwanted and in Gods perfect timing, He has shown us just even recently that our mission…our entire purpose…our job in this world has always, even when we didn’t know it…it has always been the exact same! We were teammates when we couldn’t stand each other, we were teammates when we yelled and screamed at one another, we were teammates when we would grow cold with each other….we were both created for so much more than a boring old marriage that they show on t.v. sitcoms…we were created to be united to be a force for the Kingdom and every single step we took to get to where we are today confirms this for me. The only way we could ever show love to the unloved or bring worth to those who feel unworthy could only be done by walking the 13 years together that we have been walking.

Its never been about the glory of Justin and Allie and the fact that the odds were against us and look at us we made it…great for us…we showed all the nay sayers…nope. Our marriage, little did I know for so long, our marriage is one of the biggest parts of my testimony…our marriage is a testament of Gods unfailing love, of His faithful promises and of His miracles.