One Plus One Equals Three!

I married the love of my life when I was just twenty-one years old.  We had grown up in the same church and attended high school together.  Randy and I had dated for four years and been best friends for years before that.  We got married in 1982 and moved into our little mobile home in Hampton, Georgia.  

Being married at such a young age made me always feel like I was just pretending and playing house. I worked as a Store Manager for a watch shop at our local mall while Randy went to his college classes during the day.  He played basketball for Baptist University of America.  This made for a busy schedule which included daily practices and a few games each week in the evenings.  On top of that, he worked a third shift security job.  Whew!  It was a crazy schedule that you can only do when you’re young.  It seems that we barely passed each other coming and going.  Apparently, we did pass though because just four months into our marriage we were blessed to find out that we were expecting a baby! 

I was due to start my cycle Christmas morning.  At our Christmas meal, which was
always held at noon at my in-laws house, I announced that I thought I was
pregnant.  My father-in-law stopped and asked me, “Are you late?”  “Yes,” I
replied, “I was supposed to start this morning”!  This naïve new daughter-in-law
received kind, sympathetic smiles from my new family but as it turns out, I
actually was.

I remember that I was so excited to be pregnant that I began to wear maternity
clothes almost immediately.  A friend that I worked with named Amy began to
tease me, “You don’t even have tummy yet!”  I didn’t care.  Up until this point,
I had been blessed with nice curves and a flat stomach that I assumed would
return the day I delivered anyway.  I was excited about having a baby and I
wanted everyone to know, or at least suspect, that one was on the way.  

As the months passed and my belly began to grow, the hot Georgia summer set in
too.  Pretty soon I didn’t feel so cute when I would lie sweating like a beached
whale on our leather couch with two fans blowing on me because we didn’t have
air conditioning.  Being pregnant during a southern humid summer is not a lot of
fun. Those "nice curves" just turned into big wavy lines! 

In the early eighties we didn’t have ultrasounds to find out if a little girl or
a little boy was on the way.  We didn’t know whether we were delivering a
Jessica Bree or a Zachary Isaiah, the two names we had picked out.

For two weeks prior to her due date, we waited wondering if each day would be
the day that we would meet our baby.  Finally at 3:00 am on Friday, September
2nd, 1983 I woke up from a dead sleep with a searing labor pain. I called my
doctor right away to tell him that I was in labor.  He asked me how many
contractions I had felt and I told him one.  Fortunately, Dr. Arshad was kind
and didn’t laugh at me but listened to his young patient and agreed that I
needed to leave immediately for the hospital.

Later, early that afternoon, two weeks after our first anniversary Jessica Bree
Howard entered our lives at 12:43pm and forever changed us.  She weighed in at
seven pounds and twelve ounces.  This beautiful brown-eyed girl was alert and
looking around from the moment she was delivered.

That day, as I looked at her, I discovered a new love that I didn’t understand
existed.  I had received that love from my parents but now I was the giver of
the love.  The kind of love that I knew that I would never hesitate to do
anything in my power to keep this child safe—physically, mentally and
spiritually.  I would gladly lay aside any dream or aspiration that would hinder
whatever it took to make sure she was safe, healthy, happy and achieved the call
of God in her life.  My life had shifted.  Life was no longer just about me—or
Randy and me.  It was about Jessica and setting her on course to grasp the
destiny that our Lord had ahead for her.

Loving our little baby girl stirred something new in me.  It gave me a better
picture of God’s love for me.  I had grown up with a lot of rules.  Now, rules
are good and they help us to learn our parameters but I had probably taken it to
an unhealthy level or using the rules to please people.  But, as I looked in
this sweet little face, I understood something new.  There was absolutely
nothing that Jessica Bree could do to cause me to love her any more or any less.
 I just loved her with all that was within me.  I loved her until it ached.
 That’s the way my Heavenly Father loves me.  There is nothing I do that causes
Him to increase His love for me, nor anything---anything that I can do that
could possibly cause Him to love me a half of an ounce less!  Amazing.  Psalms
57:10, “For your steadfast love is great to the heavens, Your faithfulness to
the clouds!”  

 My love for her doesn’t even come close to His love for us, but at least now, I
had a little insight and a bit more understanding.

“How great the Father’s love for me. How vast beyond all measure that He should
give His only Son to make a wretch His treasure!”

Recent picture of Jessica with her youngest son, Justus

God Wastes Nothing

I am one of those blessed people in life.  Don’t get me wrong, my life has not been perfect but it has been good. One of my favorite sayings is that “God wastes nothing.”  He uses everything to mold us into who He created us to be.

I am a daughter to Jimmie and Patsy Griffith.  I am a sister to Sharron and Tonya.  I am the wife of Randy Howard and mother to Jessica, Destiny, Olivia and Zachary. I am mom-in-law to Brant, Donny, Isaiah and Kara. I am Nana to Chloe, Maximus, Aubree, Nicholas, Titus, Annabelle, Justus, Azariah, Raelin, Jaxon, Zion, Brooke and others who are yet to be born!  I’m Auntie to a few nieces and a bunch of nephews.  More than any of these, I’m a follower of Jesus Christ and I hope that everything in my life is defined first by His name.

 I grew up in a Christian home in which my mom and dad provided a safe and happy haven for my two younger sisters and me. When my parents pass from this life, they’ll not leave us with a lot of money and monetary things to put in yard sales.  The inheritance that they have given us is in memories that created a happy childhood and healthy adulthood.  I’m privileged to have a father who absolutely loves my mother with his whole heart and has committed his life to her. I also have a mother who returns the same affection and life dedication to him.  Together they teamed to provide a wonderful home for us girls.  What more can a child want?  I left my parent’s home to marry my high school sweetheart at the young age of twenty-one.  August 20, 2014, we celebrated our 32^nd wedding anniversary.  My husband is my hero and a man that I completely adore.  All of those years have not been perfect.  A few were quite difficult in fact.  On our 25^th anniversary, Randy surprised me with a trip to Turtle Bay in Hawaii.  While there one evening, we were having dinner when I raised my wine glass to him in a toast, “To twenty-three wonderful years!”  Randy looked at me in slight confusion and said “We’ve been married twenty-five years.”  I said with a smile, “True, but a few of them weren’t very good.”  He thought for a split second, raised his glass and agreed, “To twenty-three wonderful years!” 

Yes, most of the time has been pretty amazing but the hard years are what helped to shape the good ones.  The hard years are always reminders of what is valuable and worth working and fighting for.  Sadly, I know that there are many who have different stories than I have.  My husband has served in the role of a Senior Pastor for over 25 years and was a youth pastor prior to that.  I have counseled hundreds, if not thousands, of precious people throughout the years that have had poor to very bad childhoods.  They’ve looked at me with tears in their eyes telling me of the horrors that they have suffered through.  With compassion, I urge them to “BE what you wanted”.  Be the mother/father that you wanted.  Be the husband/wife that you wanted your mother/father to have.   Be it.  As a servant and disciple of Jesus Christ, it is my call and passion to see men and women have healthy and happy marriages that mirror what God designed marriage to be.  God has given me a vision to see moms and dads raise their children to serve all of their days for Jesus Christ.  I do not believe for a second that this is an impossible dream or goal.  Jesus’ final prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane included, “Father, may they be one, as You and I are One, ….  So that the world will know that You sent Me.”  My heart is to see this prayer request of our darling Savior answered.  We must become “one” in our homes so that we can be “one” with our brothers and sisters in Christ.  Having a happy, healthy marriage does not just happen.  Having your children become God-seeking and serving teenagers and adults does not just happen.  We have to determine that we will not fail at it.  Good intentions are not enough.  We must plan it and then work out the details of seeing it brought into reality and not just good Christian rhetoric and lingo.  Let’s do it!  Being a perfect parent or husband/wife is not a pre-requisite to seeing this come about.  If it were, this would be an impossible task.  But it’s not impossible.  With God, All things are possible, right?  So, why not this?  Isn’t He big enough?  Yes.  He is.  Let’s be the generation that becomes the answer to that prayer our Lord prayed so many years ago.  So that the world will know………….