|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
A faithful person will be richly blessed (Proverbs 28:20a, NIV).
Today is my wife’s birthday. She is 36 years old, at least she is to me!
I remember the first time that I saw her (fireworks with me); our first date after she was baptized (I had made a promise to date only a believer, but didn’t wait long after her confession and baptism); our engagement; our marriage; three children; six grandchildren; founding Fellowship Church together; taking dozens of mission trips together; her graphic ability complimenting my writing and preaching; and she never gets mad — a miracle since she’s married to me.
This July 9, we’ve been married 49 years. (At the age of 36 and married for 49 years, you didn’t think that I would mention her real age, did you?)
Her two favorite Bible verses are Romans 8:35, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ,” and Romans 8:37, “In all these things we are more than conquerors.” Loving God and having the endurance to victory aptly describe Barbara (and she prefers the name Barbara rather than just Barb). I’ve witnessed her determination to finish tasks, how she still has friends from high school, and when I go off the deep end with frustration, her patience counterbalances the situation.
Barbara is an award-winning photographer and painter. This photograph, taken in Dubai and titled “Old World vs. Modernity,” explains the theme.
This painting, one of my favorites, was painted from a scene she witnessed while visiting Afghanistan and is called “Can’t See; Can’t Be Seen.”
I often tout my 100 short-term mission trips, but Barbara caused it all.
I steadfastly declared, until my early 40s, that I didn’t need to go on overseas trips since there were many people to reach in Springfield, Ohio. But in the early 1990s, Barbara read about orphans living by the thousands in Romanian orphanages after the fall of Communism, with little to no care. She had to go, and she did.
Her stories from that trip changed me, as I became convicted that former communist countries needed help with mentoring many new believers — especially in discipleship — and that Fellowship Church in Springfield could help. Being able to travel with my wife on many of these trips has been a blessing.
Barbara has discipled dozens of high school- and college-aged women, plays Pokémon aggressively, and, unfortunately, loves cats. She often says, “When I get to heaven, Kermit, Millie, Sasha, and Anya will be there to greet me (names of cats and no mention of actual people).”
She’s painted portraits of all our grandchildren and all her cats, too.
But my favorite Barbara story doesn’t involve me, Pokémon, traveling, or cats. She’s recently become a prayer warrior for Haitians and legal immigrants. About three years ago, she mentioned that a couple from Haiti, then living in a basement, needed a place to stay. She sought my counsel, saying, “We should let them live with us.”
And we did.
I appreciate the readers of Interruptions; my wife does the graphics, maintains the email list, and publishes these blog posts. Her email is barbara.ann.edwards@gmail.com. Send her birthday wishes today! But if you send a check, make it out to Grant Edwards😊.