My boys found a snake.

Granted, they've found garter snakes before. But this little guy "needed a home." And they insisted and it was, in a slithering and striking angry and strong-willed sort of way, cute. 

The snake, called "the snake" or "Spike" when they remember what they've named him, has lasted 3 weeks in his little plastic aquarium box. He basks on top of his rocks, swims in his little pond, and doesn't seem to mind too badly when we poke around in there and feel him slide across our fingers.

And he eats fish. Live fish.

You know you're the mother of three sons when it is perfectly acceptable to have a live snake in its aquarium on the middle of the dinner table. AND you're watching him hunt, catch, and swallow whole a live goldfish. "He's got him!" "Ugh, he's choking him down his throat!' "Whoa, you can see the bulge of the fish in his neck!" 

The whole deal is quite educational and somewhat endearing. The pet-store-expert told us not to release him to the wild. "It's too cold now, he is a baby and won't know to brumate (hibernate) so he'll die." So we're stuck with him. And he's stuck with us.

There's these annoying commercials that play every so often in the middle of my Ben Folds/Regina Spektor Station on Pandora. "Your spouse is the only family member you get to choose," they joke. And its true. My sons are stuck with me, not by choice, but by lineage. And even when my oldest son complains, "Some days I just want to go live at someone else's house!" He knows he's stuck with us. 

The beauty of marriage IS that we chose to be together. More than once. Sometimes daily. But we are choosing this life together because regardless of how much "sense" we make as a couple, we've committed to being ONE forever. I'm so thankful that the family member I chose is one who also chooses me.

Because, to be honest, things caged in are only fun to watch for so long. Freedom, in marriage, as well as for wild creatures, is where life is really lived out to the fullest.

How thankful I am that, unlike Spike, we are free. I love you baby, snakes on the dinner table and all!

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I just watched out my kitchen window as my oldest son worked to lift my youngest son to the top of the play-fort. My oldest son is only 5, and not that many inches and pounds seperate him from his almost-two-year-old brother. And yet, intent on allowing his younger brother to experience the make-believe pirate game they were playing with the same intensity, Christian heaved his brother up the ladder and onto the platform.

And that made me think about my faith.

I recently read an article by Chris Haw (who co-authored Jesus for President with Shane Claiborne). In "It's Not Business, It's Personal" Haw argues for a different approach to church leadership. And as I've evaluated my own role on a church staff for almost 3 years, along with my own faith walk (over a decade now), I realize how often I'm willing to argue for different approaches in leadership while slogging along in the same rut I've walked for years.

Haw makes a case for the church returning to some of the early Roman Catholic traditions - leaders taking vows of chastity, poverty and the like. That perhaps why the church fails to communicate unconditional/non-judgemental love to its neighbors is not because the message isn't packaged well, but because, outside of speaking it, church leaders seem to live a double standard.

I am guilty of this. I want to be humble. And I want everyone to be proud of how humble I am.

This is the problem. As sinful human beings, we often attempt, in our own humanness and frailty, to be comfortable and wise. Yet, Solomon's fall was in his selfishness - that although he had attained Godly wisdom - he still wanted to sleep with many wives and they (as women tend to do...) managed to pull him in many directions and away from the God he'd served.

I think sometimes we get so intent on climbing the ladder, that we forget what we're actually supposed to be doing.

Pushing someone else up in front of us, that is.

There's this ugly truth that, to push someone up a ladder, you're probably gonna have their butt in your face. And its not the prettiest place to be. And your arms might hurt. And you might use up every ounce of energy you have. And yet, just as my two sons did, you eventually find yourself sitting side by side at the top of your goal, better because you went it together.

Success isn't measured in numbers or titles. Jesus called humility success and told us that the meek would inherit the earth. I'm confident that my "less" is Christ's "more". I'm learning to see myself in a truly broken and humble place, instead of just wanting others to see me there.

Perhaps if the Church would step back down the ladder a few rungs, consider a vow of poverty, and then get someone's butt in their face while they attempted to lift someone else up - we'd find our way back to the place we were created to live. Humbly. With our neighbors. Reaching out. Lifting someone up the ladder.

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We drove by really slowly and freaked those whistle-blowers out. Funny, isn't it. You said we don't have inside jokes but then, I started thinking, and we do.

Sometimes I think we're better when its just the two of us. We function best, as we once were, in the midnights and moonlights of sophomore year. Two kids, just being, in eachother arms and in eachothers histories. We shared stories and secrets and sometimes didn't know how to tell everything we meant. But we've had six years to piece it all together and find out that, even now, somewhat more grown up than we were, we're still complete together.

We're raising kids and finally, this year, I think we're not really kids as much ourselves. We've come into our own as business owners, adults, married people, the parents of a school-aged child. We've laughed a little bit more over things that would have made you mad and me cry. We've shook it off and battled through together. And, tonight as we sit and sand and stain pieces of a railing for our remodel project together, we'll realize that just like this, just as we are, we are complete.

There's a lifetime yet, together, baby. There's this tomorrow that I think we're both living for - this understanding that our day in the sun is still around the corner and WOW what a day it will be. And still, when the world crumbles and my days are bad, you're the one I wanna crawl home to and pull the covers over my head with. You, with your crabby morning wake-ups and your late-night work days - you're all I really need to make it and I think we're making it okay.

I think you're amazing. And not just as a lover and a father and a husband but as YOU. I'm proud of who you've become and I'm proud to become with you.

Six years ago today I said "I Do." I may not have grasped everything those two words meant then, and I'm confident we're both still learning, but this year, as much and more than any before, I mean it so very much. 

I do love you - waking up with you and sharing inside jokes with you and being stupid kids while raising silly kids. We're all so very complete. And you hold it all together.

Here's to six more (and more and more and more)

I love you, lover!

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