The possibility of death has this way of making us confront issues we’ve pushed aside, waiting to deal with. Problems that have always been priority, but maybe we didn’t have the courage or the stamina to stand up and face head on.

When I married Justin, I’d been walking with the Lord for five years. I thought I’d been doing pretty well, but marriage brought out much of my self-centeredness and self-righteous pride. My husband’s cancer finally giving me the shove I needed to deal with it.

I can think of many, many moments in that first year when I acted immature, insecure, judgmental, and the list goes on. Maybe part of it was age, but a lot was pride – an unwillingness to extend grace to a man I expected to fulfill my idealized version of a Christian husband.

And though Justin was always further down the godly path in compassion, gentleness, and all manner of social courtesies, he had his flaws – his own unrealistic expectations of me.

And though a successful marriage is dependent on two people, there came a point early in the battle with cancer, when God showed me to take responsibility for my own actions.

God had been working change in my heart. The fact that I could lose my husband freed me to give grace in his failures. “You marry a sinner,” says Elisabeth Elliot, and sinners blow it. Sinners need forgiveness.

Honestly, I didn’t do forgiveness well – at least not over little things. I felt I needed to hammer points or maybe give silent disapproval in order for real change to come in my husband.

So when I finally realized that my husband needed grace (which showers love), that the Lord would work in his heart, not me, it seemed like all would go well from then on.

But that’s not what happened. There came a day when Justin misunderstood my heart. Whatever I said, he took as a judgment, and I had two immediate choices:

1. The temptation to argue – judging him for judging me.
2. To humble myself.

In that moment, a blanket of conviction covered me – my actions up to this point had conditioned my husband to think the worst of me. Just because I knew my heart had changed, and that I had pure motives in the words I spoke, didn’t mean Justin had seen it, yet.

And so, I chose to humble myself, confessing my sins – even of the past – and apologizing for the misunderstanding.

This becoming a pattern in our marriage, allowing for the best last year of Justin’s life. We enjoyed each other, and I can’t thank God enough for the many memories we built before he went home to be with the Lord.

Justin and I always had a good marriage, but it was after God worked humility in me that marriage became great.

When I met Mike, my husband, now, I told him he was lucky. Justin suffered a lot because of me. And sometimes, we still laugh about it – because Mike knows me well enough to see how I could’ve been.

And though I’ve learned different lessons in my marriage to Mike, this one I learned with Justin, has brought the greatest heart change – carrying over to all aspects of living life with others.

 “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich.”
2 Corinthians 8:9

Today, I’m linking my list of God’s many blessings with Ann Voskamp at A Holy Experience:

#211 – God’s grace writing this post, because it looked impossible yesterday – and this morning!
#212 – Sitting on the front porch with a cup of coffee, enjoying the beautiful weather, flowers, and chirping birds.
#213 – A wonderful night with one of my two best friends
#214 – The hubs home from work a little bit this week
#215 – Spring walks with the family
#216 – The cutest playhouse that my kiddos love – seeing them entertained for hours.
#217 – Laughter
#218 – Feeling better after a 24-hour stomach flu
#219 – The rest my mother-in-law allowed me by watching my kiddos
#220 – The texts from an aunt I haven’t talked to in a very long while.