One

A few months ago we were on a dinner date with some new friends and while we were getting to know each other we mentioned our anniversary was coming up. My new girlfriend excitedly said
"OH you're newlyweds! How exciting!"

Our Family.

Dan and I kind of chuckled it off and admittedly told them "We feel like we have been doing this for 100 years!" Even though that was kind of a joke, in the way that Dan and I can only joke... (you know very hilariously but extremely dry and sarcastically) but it is so true. We have been through so much in our first year together. A lot that some couples wouldn't have survived.

Which you might think is a bragging point but for me it brings a wave of complete humility. Reason being is that I know what caused us to succeed. Complete and total surrender to God. I know a lot of my readers at this point will turn away and say that "I'm not one of those women " or "she's divorced what does she know about surrender" or my favorite "you're new to your faith this is just a honeymoon."

At my Best Friends Wedding 9/14

our first official "date"

Those are all awesome topics I would love to address at a later date but for now stay with me here and let me tell you how my husband and I managed to get to the same place with God and how it changed us. Forever...

I met my husband for the first time at probably, no definitively the worst part of my life. He was a  recent graduate and I was a senior and high school and I never gave him a second thought (He has since told me for years he had a crush on me and thought I was an amazing person) Fast forward to over a decade later and we both found ourselves in failed marriages needing something to give, to break, to release us from the turmoil we were drowning in.

I had lost everything. I had buried a child, I had been emotionally abused and taken advantage of, lost businesses and jobs, homes, and at my lowest point had asked my Parents to move back in with them and my two small children to get away from the toxic relationship that I was in. The past half of my life was spent in complete and utter chaos and I was hell-bent on not having that be my children's life.

Our Ceremony Day.

I can't completely speak for my husband but during this time he was searching for something more. I ended up showing him this diagram of a triangle where the husband and wife were each at the farthest points at the base of the triangle, and at the top of the triangle sat God. I told him the closer the two moved towards God the closer they began to get to each other and that's when I dropped the hammer and drew my line in the sand. I was not going to be with a man (again) who was not fervently seeking Christ. It was a deal breaker.

Which, I love to joke about this and tell people that's how I knew Dan was serious was because I told him this Saturday night and he was at service Sunday morning. In all honestly its not that far from the truth. He was at least willing to try and at this point I had zero expectations of being in a relationship with this man. I just knew what I was looking for and I had no idea he would rise to the occasion.

Ending my marriage was something that brought me to a place of numbness, not only with life in general but also with my faith. I had water in my kettle but the burner wasn't on. So when I decided to ask this of my husband I heard a voice tell me "You know if you're going to ask this of him when I've  already asked this of you, you're going to need to step up your game."  I had to acknowledge that I was stagnant in my relationship with Christ and even though I had the education behind me all it amounted to was books on a shelf collecting dust. It was not a living thriving relationship with our creator. I was dying and I didn't even realize how bad it had gotten until I ministered to my now husband out of friendship.

As a result of these convictions (and I'm sure thousands of prayers from my Nana) I have watched him become someone that is on fire for God. He is bold in his convictions and compassionate in his daily ministry. Which right now is being a father to our two children, being a student, a son and a husband. I see a man that is quick to forgive, who is honest and challenges me to bring my faith to the next level daily. Which for me, hasn't always been true.

I have always been a believer in Christ. It wasn't until I was in my late 20s that I wanted to be a follower and it is with complete and total surrender of everything in my life that I began to change  and the windfall happened. Blessings that I can not even begin to count and areas of my life I had never seen bear fruit were suddenly, (what would seem unexplainable) plentiful. Now when I say everything I mean ev-er-y-thing. My thinking, my time, my heart, my body. Everything. Complete and total surrender of my life in the world.

Every storm we have weathered, the trials we have gotten through (law school, behavioral problems with our oldest, fertility issues, our sons heart condition to name a few) with Christ at the center of our lives. Let me tell you, this man who had never prayed before in his life before he "met" me has become such an amazing prayer warrior. I am so blessed by his new found faith in Christ because he brings newness and growth to my understanding of God where I was sallow and stunted.

I know this sounds like an entire entry about how amazing my husband is (and well he is) it is really to tell you all that no matter the walk of life you come from or where you think you are with God there is no lack of grace. There is no amount of forgiveness needed that is too much and there is no problem or situation that God cannot see you through.

Now for a hard truth. In all of the beauty of my life that I have shared with you now... my first marriage... Would not have failed had my faith and my then husband would have what I have in God today. Everything else aside, all of the semantics and the he said and the she did. It all would have been completely non-consequential had we had the faith we were called to have. The faith that we were born into. 

My marriage. My husband Daniel. My entire life and everything in it is all because a little girl a long long time ago looked under the side of a revival tent and chose to follow Jesus... Now we are trying to fulfill the legacy that has been set before us...

But that's a story for another time...

I had recently looked back at my blog and noticed that I hadn't written anything in about three years. My last entry happened to be a half hearted attempt at a birth story for my son. That poor child came into our lives when everything was at its worst and it seemed like there was nothing to look forward to. Except everything.

When I found out I was pregnant with my son my entire world was on the verge of shattering. My former husband came through my life like a freight train that had gone off the rails and I was powerless to stop it. All I could do was claim the wreckage and move forward. I had thought about writing all of it down. Explaining myself for the court of public opinion, finding out how many other women had felt the way that I did, succumbed to desperation the way that I did, failed the way that I did. In the end I know what happened to me and I might revisit it in the future to tell the long tiresome tale of how I went from Muniz to Martin. In all reality, its a very common tale that ends in tears with a midway cliffhanger to be followed by a redemption tale. We have all read that story before, this one just happens to have my characters in it.

Part of what made this section of my life so trying was not only the divorce but my second son, this unplanned, unexpected miracle was also suffering from CHD. It brought me back to where the demise of my marriage actually happened. When everything changed in a matter of 47 minutes and we would never recover. In the midst of everything my husband, Daniel, came in much the same as my former husband left abruptly, but organically and seemingly effortless.

Over the next few entries I hope to do our family justice and actually account it in a way that tells our story for all that it is. The faith, joy, tears, hardships, love and perseverance. Hopefully this is like riding a bike. A daunting emotional bike but a bike none the less.