He came to kneel at my side of the bed as my alarm chirped, and pulled back my covers.
“Jenny, I need to remarry you. I don’t need a party or a celebration, but a new covenant between us. I just feel a sense of urgency that it be today.”
I didn’t say anything at first, but then I agreed. So right there he prayed for God to bind us into a new covenant, and one that would be for eternity.
There was no pomp and stance, nothing special. I was in my pj’s, Tom was in his boxers, and the prayer was whispered into my hair in our bed.
Minutes after we were on to other things like waking up the Fab 5 and making breakfast to get kids to school. I was quiet for the rest of the morning as I was getting ready. My mind was set on turbo speed. God had something planned for us that day that I was not aware of, but was happening.
For YEARS I’ve told Tom that I wanted a redo on our vows. 10 years ago I promised to be faithful and true to Tom in a church, under God and I didn’t even know who He/he was. 10 years later, countless mistakes, countless children and one AMAZING God later, he finally wanted to remarry me.
He saw that I was quiet and thought it was because I was sad that we wouldn’t have a big celebration. But honestly, the people who know us best know that the last 3 years haven’t been much to celebrate, and we have only just recently come out of the woods. Most people wouldn’t WANT to celebrate with us, and would ask if we really thought what we were about to do was a good idea. (FYI, it’s ALWAYS a good idea to celebrate your love for your spouse, no matter what happened the day, week, month or year before.) This was about God’s timing and Tom’s urgent need to do this, it wasn’t what I’d planned or even thought would happen.
“Jenny, I don’t want to rob you from a celebration.”
I assured him that this was much better than anything I could have dreamed, and kissed him good bye as he went to work.
I got the other children off to school and Boaz and I started on our morning run. Everything was normal, except for the part that I couldn’t get Scripture out of my head.
The old is gone, the new has come.
New covenant.
A cord of three strands is not easily broken.
These words kept coming to me, and images of my family on the beach. The girls in yellow dresses and the boys in blue swept over me.
I can say that I’ve only ever had a vision from the Lord once before, and it wasn’t long ago.
We’ve been looking for a home for our family to settle into. For years I’ve told Tom I want a yellow house with a porch. He’s talked of how he wants a palm tree in the front and a large backyard on the water for our family. It was all talk because nothing of these specifications was on the market in an affordable price range for us. Waterfront property in Florida is only second to waterfront property in Hawaii. But then we found it. Still out of our price range we decided to just go look at it anyway.
As I walked through the house, I was like yeah this is nice but we can’t afford it. Then in my head I was calling for Hannah to come down for dinner. It was the most natural thing in the world for us to be there, and in my mind’s eye I saw my family there. Growing, loving and starting again. I can’t explain it, and I fear if I try to more you might think I am crazy. But I just knew that was to be our house.
After telling Tom that was it, and feeling as though we were crazy to even try we put in our very best offer. We couldn’t budge on this price. At significantly below what the asking price was, I felt like it was too much.
But God told me to trust Him.
I spent a day agonizing over the house and making it about us and not about God. Just like I’d always done before when I’d thought about remarrying Tom.
She came back with an offer we just couldn’t do. So we had to let it go. In our hearts and minds. That was a process, but it happened…and today of all days it didn’t matter if I stayed in an apartment forever because my man WANTED to remarry me.
I finished my run, hit the shower, and texted Tom to write some vows and have them done by 5pm.
Went to the mall.
This was for my man, this was about Christ being in the center of our relationship. If it was about me, I’d be wearing a new dress and of course need a new ring, but being about them I wanted it to be different.
In my vision the girls had been wearing yellow dresses. My first thought was sundresses…so I walked around to EVERY single store to find sundresses, not a thing. My dress that I’d ordered the week before to save for this very occasion was set to arrive that day, so I knew I was covered, but what would the girls wear. I wanted this to be something special. Then I passed a store with formal wear. Yeah…I can’t afford formal wear for this, that’s too much I said to myself.
But I saw a sign that said 50 % off. I just looked at the tag and was like…no…I mean, seriously even what are the chances they’d have…wait…you’ve got to be kidding me. There hanging on the back of the rack were 3 yellow dresses in just the sizes that I needed. And the price was just right. Next to them there two blue button down shirts in the sizes I needed. The ONLY ones y’all. It wasn’t like there were a TON of yellow dresses and blue shirts. There were 5, in the sizes I needed.
By this point I am starting to get excited and a little freaked out.
I’d called a friend to come take pictures, but she wasn’t available. I’d settled that it didn’t matter if we had pictures we had memories and that was what mattered.
I crossed the street to a craft store to find some string, something that I could braid into bracelets. (A cord of three is not easily broken.)
I got it and got in the car. Picked up Ella from preschool and told the Lord I was TIRED. He needed to make this happen because I was quickly losing steam.
The braiding of the string took me 20 minutes. I expected it to take a few hours. Because I braided the longest braid I could because from it we would cut 7 bracelets, each of us would wear one.
I wrapped the braid around some roses that Tom had given me the day before and sat down to write my vows. Thankfully God gave me the gift of words. They came easy but I cried much.
My dress never showed but my school age children did.
“Mom what’s with all the fancy dresses?”
I am marrying Dad again today.
The look on my oldest daughters’ faces was priceless. They’d bore the brunt of what had gone on in our home the last three years. One of the hardest things I’ve ever done is sit there with my two oldest girls and my husband as he explained to them that when moms and dads get married they make a promise to each other. If one of them breaks the promise they can’t stay together. Through tears my Hannah said “But you promised that our mom and dad would never split up.” There were no words after that. Only tears.
Today there were tears again, but tears of joy. Only God could redeem something that everyone in the world would deem unforgiveable.
Squeals and giddiness filled our home. The boys were confused and cared more about their snacks, the girls wanted their hair done and lip gloss.
At the VERY last minute I got on to Facebook and messaged all the people I knew at our church here in Florida to see if anyone might be able to meet us at the beach to snap some pictures with my camera. I couldn’t believe the responses I got. I had to turn people down!
We jumped in the car. Called Tom to meet us at the beach and told him to bring his vows.
The phone rang. It was our Realtor.
“Jenn, she is going to take the deal. She loves you guys and is driving down from South Carolina tomorrow to make this happen. She knows it’s not normal for the buy and seller to meet each other, but she’d like to meet you.”
Flabbergasted. I thanked her, let her know that other more important things were happening at that very moment but that we were still very excited about the home and would call her later.
I settled the kids on the beach…and by settled meaning, I GOT them to the sand without tears and was successful at keeping them out of the water while we waited for Tom.
As he came over the sand dune I could see that he was nervous.
“Wow” he said to the kids, “You guys look sharp.”
Our only spectators were our children and the photographer as we exchanged our vows and some randomly placed bikini clad sun lover…but you know even God has a sense of humor.
There we spoke of our love for God and each other. We promised each other and our children that we were committed to making this work. That the old was gone and the new had come. We put on our bracelets, kissed, and played in the sand.
By far my favorite part of the evening was a conversation with Hannah. She wanted to know if other families did what we just did. Not usually I told her. Most families don’t go through the things we’ve been through. She beamed and looked at her bracelet. “I love this day.” She said.
See Hannah, your mom and dad will never split up. What God has bound together, no man can take apart. See Hannah, God is true to His promises.
