fall brings romance...

I love this time of year.

This morning, as I walked out to my car at 6:30, I just had to stop for a brief moment and fill my lungs with the crisp, clean air. It was still dark, and I could see the stars shining clearer than they have shone in a long time, no visible humidity between them and me. Thank you, God, for fall…and all the memories that surround this time of year.

Some people say spring is the best season because of new birth and blooming flowers and budding trees. My season is fall.

So many life-changing events have happened in the fall. I met Ben in the fall of 2000, when I was a sophomore at Texas State University in San Marcos. We were kids then, 18 and 19, and still had so much to see and do and learn before God would bring us together as more than friends. I remember he showed up to the Baptist Student Ministry, where I was co-worship leader, an hour late and his hair was all disheveled, and I thought, "He's kind of a dork, but in a cute sort of way…" and how we agreed to keep things on a friendly level to lessen whatever pressure we felt from our summer get-to-know-each-other e-mails.

We began "officially" dating in the fall of 2002, my senior year of college, and were soon engaged once God's will was made unmistakably clear. I remember late nights and early, early mornings combing through wedding magazines as I sat in my Editor-in-Chief office waiting for the last pages of The University Star to print so I could go to bed, and the nights Ben would meet me at campus and walk me to my car to make sure nothing happened in the 200 feet I had to walk between the Star office and my parking spot.

We married Oct. 11, 2003, right on the cusp of fall, and moved to San Antonio that year, where I secured my first "real" job as a reporter at the San Antonio Express-News. I remember snuggling on our hand-me-down couch and reading articles together from a marriage magazine—a gift subscription from a college friend—after a long day at work, and jogging from our apartment to a local high school or detouring through neighborhoods and dreaming of our first home together.

Jadon was born Nov. 19, 2006, during our first Thanksgiving holidays spent in a house we could call our own. I remember wrapping him tightly in layers and layers of blankets to protect him from the wind's chill and driving home from the hospital on all the back roads at a maximum speed of 25 miles an hour—because we were carrying precious cargo.

So many life-changing events.

Ben and I just recently celebrated our four-year anniversary and added another memory to the storehouse we already have. A couple in our church booked three nights for us at a lakeside resort in Conroe, Texas. It was a refreshing time of reconnection—time that we haven't had since Jadon was born. While we missed our son and the smiles he brings to our days, we had a beautiful time enjoying each other.

Now I'll remember walking hand-in-hand through Old Town Spring, a place I haven't visited since I was a kid, and playing with toys with which we haven't played since we were little and sitting on a wooden porch swing with our arms around each other. I'll remember watching the sunset from a pier while we munched on roast beef sandwiches and Sunchips and eating strawberry cereal bars on a balcony overhanging the water. I'll remember battling massive tree roots on the miles of trails we biked at Huntsville National Park, and the way I laughed when Ben's wheel caught on an especially large root and sent him flying over the handlebars onto the sand.

So many beautiful moments.

I was chatting with an old college friend on myspace the other day, about purity and marriage and what we expect from the people we would "seriously" consider for marriage. He is marrying a beautiful woman in November, a woman who has forgiven his past and what he did before Christ delivered him at 19, a woman who has embraced the future promised by his new life in Christ. It made me think about Ben and me and how we talked about our mistakes as we prayed about God's will for our relationship, how we discovered that some mistakes were harder to let go of than others, how we fought hard to forgive and forget. Here is some of what I told my friend:

"We had 'the talk' early in our courtship, and I remember feeling just a little bit cheated for a very short time—until I realized that my (future) husband held my heart like it was fragile and special and beautiful, while many other men did not possess the kindness or respect to do that. It was a mistake in his past. I'd like to say it was a mistake that only happened once, but the reality is, he was caught in it for a while.

"But the fact that my (future) husband had made this mistake in the past—for which he had asked God's forgiveness—did not lower him in any way in my eyes and heart and mind. He was pure in every sense of the word, and I believe God made my heart see him that way. He loved the same God I loved. He loved people in a way I'd never seen. He loved me. He listened. He told the truth. He followed through. He had unshakable faith. He fought for me. He let me dance. He was daily reaching for and searching and seeking to live into the truths of God. That was enough for me.

"I don't believe God sees our mistakes as, 'OK, this one's dishonored his father and mother, this one doesn't carve out any Sabbath time, this one wants what his best friend has, this one's not a virgin…' He sees them as forgiven and erased."

We all bring to the table past mistakes. We could still be living in our mistakes. I struggle with mine every day. Jadon has opened our eyes to the human tendency toward making mistakes, though he is so young (11 months today). He has begun hitting us back when we tell him he can't play with something—just to see what we'll do, and his little lip will poke out when he realizes it was a mistake. When he loses his balance while walking (yes, he started walking—or running, really—a week and a half ago), or when Ben pushes him over just to have a good laugh, Jadon will throw himself on the floor, bang his head and release a frustrated scream before he realizes he's made a mistake getting angry. He falls off furniture all the time, though we have told him that climbing on and off is probably not the safest activity in which a baby could engage, and we let him so he will learn to be more careful (that's not bad parenting, is it???).

His mistakes might seem small in light of ours, but God uses simple pictures to teach us. We feel the same remorse that our son feels when we lash out at God because we feel he is holding something back from us. There is a reason Solomon speaks so often about the dangers of anger in the Proverbs. And I believe that God lets us fall sometimes when we take things into our own hands—because He wants us to learn that He's only concerned with our wellbeing and safety.

I believe that with any forgiveness comes shades of forgetting. When Jadon smacks my hand in defiance of discipline, then collapses, crying, into my arms and plants a kiss on my nose or mouth (his aim has improved a little), I know that he is sorry for what he's done. And as I hug him close, his offense fades from my memory. It's the same way with God.

If we could just forgive each other that same way.

In the four years we've been married, I can say that I've forgotten most of Ben's past mistakes—and the ones he's made since we've been married. There are some that creep back in when the enemy finds my guard down, but in times like those, I remember the reason I married Ben in the first place, the reason I would marry him all over again today.

Ben is one of the purest, most holy men in the world, or at least of the ones I know.

That is enough for me.

Jadon riding in a car at Chuck-E-Cheese's with his girlfriend.


He sneaks a kiss when he thinks no one is looking.


Keepin' it real after his sneaky kiss


The family at Evans and Esther's wedding


Group picture at the New Braunfels Children's Museum


I don't think he has a cowboy bone in him.


Visiting space with Mama.