Happy Birthday to My Baby

It is Becky's thirty-(cough!) birthday today. It is difficult to put into words just how special God's grace is to me in and through her. And that's exactly what she is. Since our dating relationship began almost 18 years ago and through our marriage (15 years this June) she has been the single most earthly evidence of God's ministry in the gospel to me. We have walked through much together; many times, she walked while I cowered. Still she blesses me despite my unworthiness; still she forgives, still she helps me repent, still she lavishes love.

How can I describe her? Those who know Becky know she is a force of nature. She is loud in a lovely way, adorably animated, vibrant and vivid. She feels deeply, cares greatly. She is a mother with unflagging interest in even the most mundane interests of our daughters. She finds fulfillment in fulfilling her children. A brilliant businesswoman when she had to be (and still), her ultimate desire is to take care of her family. She is the hostess with the mostess! A Loozy-anna gal, she cannot cook a small meal and so is happiest when our house is full of friends laughing, loving, and eating.

She is an endless supply of lovability. Here's something I have appreciated relatively recently:
Her eye is remarkable. Photography is a talent she has developed only in the last few years, but I remember way back when her knack for putting together an eye-catching bulletin board for the youth group or for "visual merchandising" in the Baptist Book Store made people stop and pay attention, whether they were walking down a hall or watching from afar in the strange world of the corporate office of the Baptist Sunday School Board. And while that artistry lay dormant for a decade, I see now the uncanny way with her camera she notices tear-drop sized berries emerging from a snowbank or the shadow of a sapling across a sunlit stream. I am able to look; she is able to see. I see a treelined road; her eye captures a Narnian path, an invitation to magic. I love this about her. It is a long-running inside joke between us that Becky has "beguiling blue eyes," but I suppose it's only fitting that those beguiling eyes capture beguiling images.

This is just the tip of the iceberg of the ways Becky makes ordinary life extraordinary. If I were to tell of all her amazingness, I suppose all the blog posts in the world could not contain them. But here is one more, and the diamond in her crown: Becky desperately loves Jesus, and she feels his gospel in her veins. Christ is precious to her.
And she is precious to me.

Happy Birthday, baby. I love you.

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