Sacred Mundane: The Blog

Thirty-One years ago today, the love of my life was born into this world.  The two greatest things in my life, of which I am least deserving are these:  First, to be born again into the family of God, chosen, redeemed, forgiven, and set apart. Second, to be loved by such a man.  I never in my wildest dreams imagined I would ever be loved in such a sacrificial, selfless, wholly devoted manner.  I’m so thankful to be married to Jeffrey Scott Patterson.  Here are a few reasons:

1. He is truly selfless, more selfless than any person I’ve ever met.

2. He is genuine in everything that he does.

3. No menial or humble task is beneath him.

4. He genuinely loves people for their sake, regardless of their status, without thought of his own gain.

5. He’ll eat anything, wear anything, live anywhere, do anything, and be perfectly and absolutely content.  He is the easiest person to please on earth.

6.  He devours God’s word like nothing I’ve ever seen.

7. He’s obsessed with truth, the gospel, Christ.  Obsessed.

8. He never gets offended.

9. He never loses patience with me when I get offended (or am grumpy or moody or angry or frustrated!).

10. He loves and honors his parents and mine.

11. He’s willing to take his week of vacation and spend it on a family road trip with my parents and brother’s family, riding in the backseat of his own car for 800 miles between two small children while his father-in-law drives. (I know, this one takes the cake!)

12. He never worries about money.

13. He prays.

14. He’s never spoken a harsh word to me. Never.

15. He feels deeply and is grieved by sin.

16. He never demands his own way.

17. He plays with Dutch, gives him baths, puts him to bed. He makes oatmeal every morning and boils the water for my tea.

18. He is open-handed and generous with money. (way more than me!)

19. He works hard at his job–and always has, even in the past when he hasn’t liked his jobs.

20. He brags about others’ accomplishments, like my brother’s, without feeling threatened or insecure.

21. He truly rejoices in the successes of others.

22. He’s not materialistic.

23. He changes diapers. He actually volunteers to change diapers.

24. He’s humble.

25. He loves to read.

26. He keeps our family a priority.

27. He sat through the five hours of Pride & Prejudice movie, and actually loved it.  That’s a man!

28. He waited to kiss me until our wedding day.  He’s made up for lost time every since. 🙂

29. He reads my blog.

30. He cheers me on,  promotes me, and empowers me like no one else.

31. He is a godly man, worthy of my love and respect.  I’m so thankful to be Mrs. Jeffrey Patterson.

Happy Birthday, hon.  I love you.

Indulge this mama while she shares this precious moment.  Dutch is just now really beginning to talk (at least in words that we understand), so tonight, as we were tucking him in and after we prayed for him, we asked him if he wanted to pray.  He shyly said yes. This was his prayer:

“Dada God, Kant Noo.”

Translation: Father God, Thank you.

Ok, melting heart right now.  Please Lord may this be the first of many prayers, true prayers from His heart to yours.

‘ve kind of held off from writing too much about our living situation with the Dombrows.  They are, as everyone knows, the kind of people that everyone loves, and the kind of people that everyone wants to be friends with.  Since the first day I met Joy I fell in love with her, and came home and told Jeff that I thought she was the kind of friend–with a tenaciously persevering love for Christ, a passion for truth, a joyful spirit, and a keen sharp mind–that I’d been longing for.  A kindred spirit who I knew would challenge me (in a good way!) on every level.

But I’ve wanted so much to respect their privacy, and wanted so much not to smother them, that I’ve purposed not to gush.  So up to this point I am proud of my non-gushing accomplishment.  However, as we moved out last Sunday, and since Joy took the freedom to admit to the world that our living situation was a blessing from God (read her thoughts here), I will now go ahead and give myself license to share…ok, gush.  Here’s my own list

What I loved about the Dombrow/Patterson Home:

1. Jeff & Joel’s Matt Foley impressions.

2. Crying in Joy’s arms when things were hard.

3. Praying together at the kitchen table.  Crying together at the kitchen table.

4. Joy’s willingness to overlook Dutch’s fingerprints, crumbs, cars strewn everywhere and muddy dumptrucks in the backyard.

5. Laughing ourselves to tears while playing Settlers of Catan or Dutch Blitz.

6. Joy and I sneaking off to our rooms to blog while Joel and Jeff watched 24.

7. That glorious silence when we got all 4 kids to bed. Congratulating each other that we’d made it through another day!

8. Sharing milk.  Nothing like coming home from a weeklong vacation and having a fresh gallon of milk waiting for you.

9. Cups of tea with Joy.

10. Meeting each other’s friends and family.

11. Walks through the neighborhood, all eight of us and Cooper!  Doing lunges on the sidewalk outside Barrington Heights. 🙂

12. Only cooking twice a week. Oh I miss that so much!!

13. Seeing the joy in Dutch’s face when he got up in the morning and ran downstairs to see everyone.

14. Dutch’s wanting to know the whereabouts of everyone all the time (and their vehicles): “where’d da woof woof go? Where’d Nae-Nae dada go? Where’d Nae Nae go? Where’d Nae-Nae Mama truck go?”

15. Learning SO much about godly parenting.  I think God knew I needed help so He sent me to Joy.

16. Talking honestly and openly about the Lord, church, theology, and current issues.

17. Seeing Joel & Joy’s genuine faith and love for us and the church.

18. Holding hands and praying together, praising God for his work Easter Weekend.

19. The encouragment of living with people who understand how gloriously exhausting the work of the ministry really is.

20. Crowding all of us around their little round kitchen table for dinner.

21. Having extra sets of arms to hold Heidi.  Watching Nathan and Elisabeth get her to smile.

22. Saturday mornings, unshowered, in sweats with no makeup and being totally at ease.

23. Hearing the front door open at 5:30pm and taking guesses of which husband it was.  🙂

24. Teaching them to recycle. 🙂

25. Learning about Joy’s redemptive decorating techniques and secret bargain decor stores.

26. Folding each other’s laundry.

27. Eating all the treats that people brought us!

28. Spur-of-the-moment front-yard parties with the Downs.

29. Watching Nathan read to Dutch on the stairs.

30. ALl of us crowding around the computer to watch the video Nathan made about Dutch.

31. Helping the kids with Joy’s mother’s day gifts. They love their mommy so much.

32. Watching Elisabeth rehearse her Skunk lines.  Cheering for her when she nailed them.

33. Finding that we all four are SO likeminded in ministry and the things of the Lord.  Praising God for how He allows us to serve Him together.

34.  The joy of knowing that, Lord-willing, we get to go back and be neighbors in just a few months!

—

There’s so much more I could say, but I’ll leave it at this.  God had such a rich blessing in store for us, greater than any of us ever anticipated.  We can’t recreate it, but I praise Him for how He bonded our hearts during that short but sweet season of life. So thankful to be serving Christ together here a Wilamette.  We’re now more than co-workers, now friends. And more than friends…now family.

It would be really embarrassing to see a print out of all the random things I type into my little google search box.  I think I mentioned that one day my two searches were: “Ok to eat ground beef left out overnight?” and “How to clean Boudreaux’s Butt Paste off walls?” You can tell what kind of day it was.  This week my searches have included “black low-rise flare yoga pants” and “best steam iron” (I got birthday money and those are my two wish list items–sad but true).  In the past I’ve been known to search “how to get my 10-month-old to nap” and “how many calories in small Blizzard?” Just for the record, the answer to the last one is 550 (for a small — yikes!).  I even look up proper word pronunciations if I’m unsure. I know. GEEK.

All that to say that as a girl (I will call myself a girl until I’m 80) in this computer/internet world I go to google for just about everything.  It’s so nice to have a place you can go for advice about everything.  No matter what I’ve wondered about, it seems that someone out there has done the research for me.  I love it!

You know what’s scary though?  That this instant-answer sort of culture in which we live has, I believe, weakened my ability to wait on the Lord and His voice. I remember last summer, when we were waiting on the Lord about job situations and living situations, I remember actually thinking, as horrible as this sounds, “If only I could just google an answer and find out what we were supposed to do.”  Yes, I thought that.

Alas, we cannot Google God.  He cannot be googled because He is God, He is relational, He is our goal.  And if all we want are answers and quick fixes, as I often do, we have missed the point of the gospel entirely.  How sad that so often I just want my information life figured out…instead of really just wanting Him.

Tonight’s message at church was on God’s Word, and I must admit I have been struggling in this area.  For whatever reason since graduating from seminary I find myself so wanting to “take a break” from the extrememly scheduled and disicplined regimen that I kept before that I find myself just, well, slacking I guess. I’m still reading, but I find my mind wandering.  Because I don’t “have” to do things, I find myself doing a lot more Scrabble playing and a lot less Word searching.  (I was going to write “a lot more word searches and a whole lot less searching the Word” but then realized that was the most ridiculously cheesy thing on the planet.  I have a cheese-streak, sadly enough.)  Anyway, here’s the sad truth:  It’s mid-June which means I should be in Psalms according to my reading plan.  This morning I read 2 Kinds 23. OUCH.  WAY behind.

But it’s not just that I’m “behind”, it’s that I realize my hunger and thirst for God have just been lacking of late.  So while my flesh would like to just Google, “be near me Lord Jesus”, it doesn’t work like that.  How sad that I think like that. How sad that I want instant spirituality without investing in the Love relationship of my life, with my Savior.

So tonight I’m asking God to renew my heart of love, and primarily by renewing in me a fervent passion to study His Word, to draw nearer to Him, to get back on track with the discipline of reading His life-giving scriptures.  Because life is so much more than figuring out which steam iron to buy.  Help us, Father, to love you more and search Your Words to know Your heart.