
Katy Rose Collection: Art, Words
How to Keep Rolling to the Middle
After 20 years of marriage, a few helpful tips from others that have proved very helpful.
We moved to Hawaii with one suitcase each after we got married and stayed in a dirty, roach-infested hostel called the Banana Bungalow until we found an apartment at the Coconut Inn. All our furniture was used and free. I bought an old frame and candle from the thrift store to make it home. Our neighbors became close friends and often invited us over for dinner since we were basically still children. We trace so many parts of our life now back to that first year in Hawaii. It was full of challenges, excitement, first-year angst, and so much provision from the Lord. Yesterday we celebrated 20 years of marriage. What a gift. I love being married to my husband.
At dinner last night, we reflected on the memories, surprises, and bits of wisdom that we've collected from others along the way. Here are a few lines from early on that come to mind frequently for me:
Elisabeth Elliot quoted an old poet with the line, "Love’s strength stands in love's sacrifice." It's antithetical to culture's creed, but it's a picture of Jesus, and a goal for marriage.
We read the book A Severe Mercy in those early Hawaii days that was deeply impactful in a number of ways. One line the newlywed couple in the book talks about is "creeping separateness," and that has always stuck with us. Resisting the little things that can slowly push people apart.
The book Humility by Andrew Murray is not expressly on marriage, but is so applicable. We can look to the humility of Christ to guide our actions toward each other.
"I want to be free of self-pity. It is a tool of Satan to rot away a life." This line was from a young widow and mother after the tragic event of losing her husband. I love that... free from self-pity! It really does rot away life when we cling to it.
Keep "rolling to the middle." As the chorus from a Sara Groves song says, "All the complicated wars, they end pretty simple. Here, when the lights go out, we roll to the middle." Points to quick forgiveness and choosing each other over and over again.
Tension of Two Cities
Image © Charles Marville / Musée Carnavalet / Roger-Viollet
The Metropolitan Museum of Art was hosting a French photography exhibit several years back and there was one shot in particular that moved me. During this period in Paris, masses of the working poor were forced out of the inner city and into shanty towns on the city's edge. So while the world saw dazzling development, the more authentic picture was this:
"The photograph conveys what one author claimed in 1870, that Paris was in essence two cities 'quite different and hostile: the city of luxury, surrounded, besieged by the city of misery.' ”
It struck me because I had seen this tension many times. Just saw it again this morning. Pain and the beauty all mixed up together. The perpetual awareness of life in a fallen, beautiful world startles you and changes you. Heartache lives on the same street as hope.
The best is yet to come, and for now, we keep choosing our responses to what we witness.
For the longer story with lessons from our life in NYC, see this post from ten years ago.
Top Photo: Top of the rue Champlain (View to the Right) (20th arrondissement), 1877–1878
Image © Charles Marville / Musée Carnavalet / Roger-Viollet
Just As I Am
Have you ever sung the hymn Just As I Am?
Just as I am, without one plea,
But that Thy blood was shed for me,
And that Thou bid’st me come to Thee,
O Lamb of God, I come! I come!
It was written by a woman who rarely left her sickbed. Charlotte Elliott, born in 1789, spent most of her adult life ill and uncomfortable. She felt useless, forgotten, and bitter toward God.
Until one day, a pastor told her, "Come to Jesus... just as you are."
And that moment changed everything. Charlotte understood for the first time that she was accepted and loved in her brokenness because of Christ. Though her body remained frail, her soul was set free. She surrendered her life and picked up her pen.
From that place of pain, she wrote hundreds of hymns, poems, and letters, including the one that still invites us all to come just as we are.
She once wrote:
“God sees, God guides, God guards me. His grace surrounds me, and his voice continually bids me to be happy and holy in His service just where I am.”
We don’t have to be strong, because it’s the Lord who is the strength in our weakness.
Just as I am, Thy love unknown
Has broken every barrier down;
Now, to be Thine, yea, Thine alone,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come!