Our 5 year jubilee

In our country every 5 years celebrating birthdays and anniversaries marks a jubilee. Matt and I just celebrated our 5 year wedding anniversary jubilee. It sometimes feels surreal that we have been married for 5 years, are expecting our second child, and now live in another country. Wow, life has happened these past 5 years. As I reflect back on our marriage, I am reminded of how God has grown us, shaped us, changed us, and challenged us. I am also reminded of how imperfect we still are and how far we still have to go, but how much more we love each other today than we did 5 years ago. We are still on a journey to santification and God knew that we needed each other in this process. It has been especially intresting to see how God has used our experience of moving overseas and living in a culture and context that is not our own to santify us, challenge us, and force us to communicate even more. He's not done yet and for that we are thankful. We will never arrive on this earth, but await the day we will be face to face with our Savior. Our actual anniversary is June 23rd, which was this past Saturday. Our celebration wasn't extravagent, but we loved our time together on a date getting to talk about our marriage while some friends watched Harper for us. We went to an Italian restaurant in Istanbul and ordered steak. haha. Oh the things you do when you live in another country. But, the steak turned out to be quite delicious. On the topic of marriage, I am serious when I say that God is using this time in our lives to bring things to our attention that may be easily overlooked in America. It seems that when you move or even visit another country your sin definitely comes out. It is in front of you and magnified to the 10th degree. This has forced us to communicate, and even on some days, barely communicate, but we have recently started discussing again our God given roles in marriage, expectations, our life stage, how to serve one another, how to show one another love and how to meet each other's needs. It has been refreshing and I think very beneficial. I believe every couple should address these questions every few months and especially in new life situations. Family Life has some great resources to read, think through and discuss with your spouse. I can't wait to see where God is going to take us in the next 5 years!