Last week marked an almost-forgotten memory for Alex and me. Not because it wasn’t special, it was. And not because we aren’t sentimental people, we are. This memory has just been a little bit buried by the here and now. Six years ago, Alex got down on one knee (during a college football game, because he loves me) and asked me to be his bride. We immediately drove to the mall for “engagement pictures” in the photo booth and did not let go of one another’s hands for the next five hours.

Every newly engaged gal knows what follows next: I stared at my ring at every opportunity. Hands on the steering wheel- look at my ring! On the elliptical- look at my ring! Typing on the computer- look at my ring! It was simple and modest, but I walked around for weeks just knowing that everyone around me must have noticed the new addition to my left hand, and all that it meant for me. I no longer had to pretend that I was buying bridal magazines for a friend. I could actually google wedding venues in the clear view of another person. I could plan, plan, plan and since I had basically been doing so secretly for about six years, this came very naturally. I was in love. We were in love. All we saw was love.

Still, Alex and I were blessed with very wise people around us during our engagement, so we were not living completely in fantasy land. We knew marriage would be hard. We knew we had to prepare more for a lifetime than for a party. We knew keeping God at the center of our lives was the only way to begin our life together. We knew.

But we also didn’t, because we had no idea what it would look like for all of those things to be true.

*****

Becoming parents will change a marriage in profound ways, because the love – and money and space and time— that was divided between two people must be not only be shifted around, but it actually has to grow to make room for a third, or fourth or fifth or sixth person. It’s simple math, really (or is it physics? I’m a words girl, I don’t know). If two things fit comfortably in a set space, when we add more we either have to redefine comfort or find a bigger space; but it’s hard for everything to stay the same without constantly running in to one another.

When Alex and I watched our son develop (I should say not develop) and land in the category of special needs, we were, in essence, handed something that takes up a whole lot of space.     

I can tell you that things get tense easily. So easily it’s scary. We started running in to one another before we knew how to adjust our space. There would be days early on where I thought Cannon was having a great day— good eye contact, looking up at the sound of his name, signing for more— and as I would share my optimism with Alex, if he did not match it, if he didn’t see the same things and feel what I felt, we would instantly be at each other. I would accuse him of being negative and pessimistic, and he would accuse me of not letting him feel what he needed to. And then the roles would reverse a thousand times: I would be feeling so low about Cannon’s progress and Alex would be feeling great about it; then I would think him ignorant and he would think me cynical. A long period of silent treatment usually followed these moments, as we both at different times felt like we had vulnerably shared that we were hopeful only to feel like our hope was batted away by one another.

And when two people can’t hope for something together, it gets all kinds of hard. Doesn’t so much of our pain come from misplaced hope?

But those conversations were, and still are, only the minor players. Permission to speak freely? Forgive the overgeneralization, but I think in general men don’t need to be happy to want to have sex. Women, however, often do. When a mama is just flat out low for months at a time, the bedroom is not exactly the most happening place. And that matters in marriage. It matters so much. Then there’s the budgets that need a major overhaul, the suddenly limited supply of babysitters because not just anyone can handle a little boy who can’t communicate his needs, and the fact that autism is just always on our freaking minds because it has to be: does he want raisins? Are the doors locked? Why is he crying? Are you taking him to therapy today? If we go to the birthday party do you want to shadow Cannon? Is he kicking his crib or hitting his head?

It all just takes up a lot of space.

There’s the general thought floating around out there that 80% of marriages with an autistic child end in divorce. Well, that’s not really true, but special needs absolutely puts a unique stress on marriage. We know it, because we have seen a hundred tiny splinters turn in to actual wedges between us in the last year. Every marriage has those splinters, a special needs marriage just has different ones—maybe more of them, but I don’t know that for sure. We all need guards in our marriages and we all need Jesus. Still, Alex and I looked at the very real evidence that many special needs children end up being raised by single parents at a time, and we said, “No. We do this together. Very imperfectly, but always together.” I don’t know how we could ever do it apart.

We don’t have a formula for navigating our marriage on this journey, but we have one thing that we believe has made all the difference: a burning desire for God’s glory. And that’s really it, that is our answer. So we start there and we end there. Alex led the way on this—this man has put more scripture in his heart and mind in the last six months than in our entire marriage. It’s his oxygen. When he is playing with the kids he constantly stops and says “guys, look at the clouds, did you know the Heavens declare the glory of God!” Sometimes Cannon will look up and sometimes he won’t, but I can tell you it is impossible not to feel held and provided for when you are saying out loud that even “the sky declares His handiwork!” Your eyes immediately find your son and you think “Yes, Cannon, your life declares the glory of God and the way he made you proclaims his handiwork!” God’s word instantly changes the way we see this struggle— as if we are in those moments not fighting it but letting God do what he will in it.

Daily we are finding that when we believe in the perfect ending of this story, God’s story, the same things take a much different shape. Our hope is reoriented to the only thing that can sustain it, the gospel. Autism, while it may make us weary many days, doesn’t loosen our grip on one another, it forces us to grip the cross like our life depends on it—because it does. But friends, I promise you, when we are grabbing hold of Jesus through the access we have to him in his word, He holds us. And then we don’t have to stay in the place of “why would God let Cannon go through this?” because we know: it’s for his glory.

*****

My faith in Jesus, and my marriage to Alex, is not the same as it was six years ago when I was blissfully unaware of the nuances of marriage and parenting and thought picking colors was preparing us for big decisions later on. Today, I realize that I know so much less about anything but desire so much more of Jesus, and that is because God gave us the blessing of our sweet boy. Autism woke me up to God’s redemptive plan, and it forever changed the way I hope my marriage reflects God’s glory. And while I will always have days that I want someone to listen to how hard this can be, or feel bad that it costs so much money, or have sympathy because school and vacations and holidays are always going to look different for us, what I want my life to say far more than anything else is this: “Come and see what God has done: he is awesome in his deeds toward the children of man… Come and hear, all you who fear God, and I will tell you what he has done for my soul.”

Alex, I'm so  grateful we get to do this together.

Today Alex and I celebrate our 4th anniversary.  I know. Babies. In the marriage sense that is.  Four years hardly qualifies me for any sort of marital advice, so you won’t find any of that here.  But we have had a full enough four years of marriage and just over five years together that, like anyone who has lived, sinned, parented, loved, fought or forgiven, four years does give me story: one larger story of God at work and a hundred short stories reminding us of that very thing.

My friendship with Alex started in January of 2010. I was just starting my last semester of graduate school in the middle of Pennsylvania, and Alex was in the middle of a year-long deployment to Iraq.  So, that sounds like a great recipe for a meet-up, yes?  Besides the problems with the physical locale, each one of us had, well, junk in our lives.  We wouldn’t know the full extent of one another’s stuff until later, but I’ll spoil the ending just a bit: I was rather hung up on another guy, and Alex was not fully free of a life that involved a bit of women and a lot of alcohol.  Still, behind the encouragement of my best friend who had connected us, we emailed and looked endlessly at one another’s pictures on Facebook (whatever, I call it discretion, people; you know you would do the same). 

The email communication with Alex was easy from the beginning.  He was kind and funny and honest.  He emailed when he said he would (a welcome relief for the girl who spent far too many hours waiting by her phone for the text that would never come), and he asked good questions, things I cared about answering.  As luck, or God, would have it, my trip to visit my best friend Emily in Spokane, Washington, would overlap with the first two days of his two weeks of leave from Iraq.  Our first date was March 9, 2010, with the company of great friends who knew enough about me to know that sending me out on a solo date with a guy I had only ever met in words would be, well, disastrous.  Case in point: I went to get dressed for the date and walked out in a black sweater, jeans, and my Nike running shoes.  True story.  Emily took one look at me and said “No.”

Our first date was great, our second over coffee the next day was even better, and by the time I hopped on an airplane back east 48 short hours after I met Al, I was taken.  He was, too.  Mutual taken-ness with one another is perhaps the most fun time in a dating relationship.  It’s all light and flirty and wonderful when you occupy a space in someone’s heart and mind that makes you feel, well, loved. And loved is no small thing at all. 

But every relationship does eventually get real.  Ours did in July 2010.  Alex had been committed to a new life in Jesus and I had finally found the confidence to cut all ties with the other guy- something I should have known to do many months before.  But you know, sin is a hard thing.  You’ve heard the metaphor, but if the wound isn’t completely clean, the infection will just come back even if you diligently change the bandaid each day.  We both had more cleaning to do.

In July 2010, on his way home from Iraq during a three-day stop over in Germany, Alex found himself deep in the elation and celebration that a war-tour for a few hundred young U.S. Armed Services members was over, and he made a few bad decisions.  He called me around 3am that morning, told me through pained tears about the alcohol and the other woman, and listened to me sob on the other end of the phone.  Everything we both feared the most was real and right in front of us.  For Alex, his fear was his past.  For me, my fear was my future.  We both thought our sweet romance was over. 

I could tell you so much about the next few hours, and someday I will.  But there was godly advice from a wise man, there was prayer, there was an ocean, there were a few trusted friends who spoke life and not death, and there was a small spark of hope.  That’s all we needed.  I'm not sure that we have ever done this as well in our lives since that day, but we went to God on desperate knees, and He answered. 

The days and weeks following were painful.  There were more tears, a whole lot of insecurity, and discussions that you truly never want to have with someone you love.  But right there, in the middle of all of that, there was Jesus.  And I can tell you what saved our relationship in those months, and even today, was not our pursuit of each other but our pursuit of the Lord.  Only He can heal in the ways we all need him to.  Only He can teach us what love and grace are supposed to look like, and only He can make it possible to live them.

Alex and I were married at the park of my childhood, where I grew up pulling tadpoles out of the creek and keeping up with my brothers as we climbed from tree to tree.  It was a perfectly warm California August, thirteen months removed from one of the hardest days, but it might as well had been a lifetime, because it truly was the best day.  Between that terrible July night and the beautiful August evening, we had mentors and Alex went through a recovery program.  We read books about purity and marriage and we told the truth to each other- sometimes that is a hard thing to do.  Alex committed to abstaining from alcohol and still does to this day.  I’m so proud of him for that, because it’s not easy.  He’s felt out of place or just left out more than once—as people pleasers social events are often a lot easier to navigate with a beer in your hand.  But Alex has said again and again that his best is sober, and he’s committed to staying that way.  Five years strong.

I love so many things about being married to Alex.  I love that he makes me laugh hysterically and supports every single one of my dreams.  Really, every single one.  I love how he acts like everything I cook is the best thing he’s ever tasted.  I love how incredibly patient he is with me.  I love watching him parent our children, because he loves them so tenderly.  I love how he listens when I talk.  I love the way he cares for other people.  I love that he cried in the Hunger Games when Rue died.

You only have to be married for two hours to know that there are plenty of things you won’t love about your spouse, and yes, we have that list for each other, too.  (Have I told you that when Alex tells a story while he’s driving, he might as well be in outer space because the rest of the world is going the speed limit while he cruises along at 40 miles an hour.  Multi-tasking, not so much). But what being married to Alex has always done is make me want to be more of the woman he loves.  Our marriage most certainly gets tangled with rude comments, shut doors, silent treatments, and irrational anger on my part (see: three babies in three years), but when someone serves as selflessly as my husband does, the only reaction is repentance, and then to try and serve him better. As any married couple knows, the crap comes and your spouse gets the worst of you sometimes.  But when you turn to Jesus before anyone or anything else, He loves making the ashes of that mess something beautiful again.  Maybe more than anything else, being married to Alex made me believe that.

In four years of imperfect marriage we’ve watched two precious babies come into the world and anxiously await a third.  We’ve left jobs, took risks, and lived on a summer landscaping job salary.  We bought a home and a minivan.  We’ve set goals and made mistakes and had to ask for forgiveness from each other, from our friends, from our children.  But here we are, living a story that almost wasn’t.  But it is, because Jesus is, y’all.

To my amazing man, I love you more than yesterday, but not as much as tomorrow. 

*All of these pictures were taken by my beautiful friend, Laura, who is talented and generous and sweeter than I can say.

**I made Alex take these pictures for our anniversary gift to each other, both to document what is *probably* my last pregnancy and remember this beautiful story we get to tell of God.  He's such a good man for saying 'sure.'