It’s hard to follow up a post like, “we’re having a baby.” It’s like trying to write a song after you won a Grammy, or writing your next novel after the Pulitzer. But, alas, a singer must sing, a writer must write, and a blogger must blog.

We’re sneaking up on 16 weeks and everything is still tip-top. Katie’s nausea has subsided a little, but it still comes and goes. Not too long ago, we wondered, “What will our baby look like?” Today Katie sent me a few candidates.

Editor’s note: if these are your kids, my sincere apologies. We’re not pedophiles, my wife just likes reading random blogs.

A girl? Katie has become convinced we’re having a girl since both our sisters have all boys. She claims that she’s finally coming to terms with dealing with the possibility of having a girl. In all honesty, I think Katie kind of wants a girl, it’s all she talks about. Could this beauty be our child?

I’m certainly grateful for the fact that we’re having a child in the first place, so I don’t want to get too demanding. But, to me, in an ideal world we’d have a son first. I think it really gives me an opportunity to teach him about leadership, taking responsibility for the younger ones, etc. Especially if our son looked like this dapper lad!

Deep, deep down, I kind of think that Katie really wants a panda. Could this be our panda?

Oh well, can’t win them all.

If it’s on Facebook, then it’s true. We’re having a baby!

Today marks Katie’s 14th week, so we found out back in August. But this journey has been nearly a year in the making. In the fall of last year, we began talking more about entering that next stage of life, and we came to find out the journey brought along some speed bumps.

We tried and tried and tried for what seemed like forever, though in retrospect it was such a short amount of time. Never-the-less, I know it was hard for Katie to be met with disappointment each month. On top of that, we began to wonder if something was wrong. Like is often the case with struggle, hardship, or suffering, it’s one of those situations that teaches you to be way more sensitive and compassionate towards other couples in whatever their situation may be. For that, we praise God for changing our hearts.

Then, in June, the test came back positive. We were so excited and thankful, but that would only last a couple weeks. We had the unfortunate experience of having a miscarriage, which was by far the hardest thing we had to deal with in our marriage. Again, God allowed us to learn and grow a lot through that time. Our marriage is stronger now than ever, and we’re pretty darn excited to be where we are while heading to this next stage of life.

My hope is that Katie and I will continue to deepen our hope and faith in the God who gives life, and breath, and everything else. Being where we are today, I think we have a much sharper picture of God’s timing and goodness, but this isn’t the end. Now, more than ever, we need to cling to the God that gives us hope.

There is a side of this experience that weighs down our hearts. We have close friends that continue to struggle in child-bearing, or know they that cannot have kids. To be honest, that sucks. A lot. I don’t understand why we of all people are blessed in this way when others aren’t. I am constantly amazed by the grace and patience of our friends who continue to struggle, and we will continue to pray for them.

So there it is. It seems strange to me because there’s no change in me, but I can see a person growing inside of Katie. I know the weight of fatherhood will come in time, but for today I am preparing for the joy and responsibility that’s been given to me. I think Hannah said it best:

“O LORD of hosts, if You will indeed look on the affliction of Your maidservant and remember me, and not forget Your maidservant, but will give Your maidservant a son, then I will give him to the LORD all the days of his life, and a razor shall never come on his head.”

I’m not specifically asking for a son, and our kid will probably get haircuts. Well, maybe. But the point is that God has heard our cry and given us the blessing we asked for, and now we want to turn around and raise our kid in honor of the God we choose to serve. That is the very least and very best thing we could do for a God who is so gracious and so wonderful.

It’s hard to believe that two years ago today I was getting ready to marry the most amazing woman I had ever met. How do you put into words how much you love a person, or all you’ve experienced together in life? You can’t do it justice. But from the first bite of the donut, I knew our marriage was going to be great.

From the beginning of our marriage, God has been so good. Obviously, He was good before, but if you were at our wedding you could see it. The entire week up to our wedding was rainy and cold. Then Friday it warmed up and the winds came, and Saturday was beautiful and dry. A perfect October wedding.

And we can see the hand of God in our marriage today. There has been joy and suffering, laughter and tears, but through it all we can hear God tell us that He loves us and He wants us to see our full potential as one. Daily, I am reminded how selfish I am, and how lovely Katie is. I can only hope and pray to love her like I should.

Truth be told, she’s easy to love! Who isn’t enthralled by her jokes, wit and personality. Or captivated by her beauty (especially that new haircut, ooh la la!). I am blessed beyond anything I could have imagined. I am truly grateful that God gave me the woman of my dreams, and the love that He gave us has continued to grow and grow. I can honestly say I love Katie more today than ever.

So we look forward to year three, I have a feeling it’s going to be an adventure. Whatever happens I pray that I would put Katie before myself, and God before both of us.

A lot of people say the first year of marriage is the hardest. To be honest, Katie and I didn’t experience that. Sure, there was an adjustment period, getting used to each others day-to-day routines, but before long it felt like we had always been married.

The second year has been even better than the first! There were a few rough spots, and some circumstances that were out of our control, but we handled it all and stayed on course.

But now, two weeks before we enter our third year of marriage, I have a confession to make. I have been a crappy husband.

I don’t know what it was about this weekend, but there was a heightened tension in our marriage. What I do know is that I have been selfish, on edge, passive, aggressive, passive-aggressive, and just plain crap.

Katie, my love, I am so sorry.

I’ve had a cold for what seems like weeks. But that’s not an excuse. Work has been challenging. But that’s not an excuse. There are a thousand things that I could blame, but I only have myself and my selfishness. The past three days I have chosen to serve myself rather than my wife, and now I see the horrible effect it has.

Honestly, I don’t know how a majority of the world does it. Were it not for God showing me my selfishness and giving me hope and grace to correct it, I would still be pouting in the corner. And then our marriage would be hard.

Kathryn, you are my love and joy. I can’t wait to get into year three!

The song, much like the gift, goes on and on . . . and on. Can you find mid-80’s Katie and her sister Emily?

Hint: glasses.

The past few weeks have been a bit of a roller coaster for the Saldanha’s. Katie and I both agree that it might have been the hardest couple of weeks of our marriage. The great thing about that is it’s not because of something we did, but just learning how to deal with circumstances. Once God has put a little more shape to this story we’ll be sure to tell it, but for now I’ll continue to be vague.

This past weekend we took three days and headed east to the lovely town of Holland, Michigan to visit the Bishop’s. Becca Wade Barry Bishop is Katie’s best friend from Hope College, and her husband Josh and son Jackson are studs. We had a great time. We also visited Mars Hill Church, home of Rob Bell. This was my fourth visit to Mars Hill without actually hearing Rob speak, but they always have fantastic guest speakers.

This weekend was no exception.

Shane Hipps was visiting from Phoenix, and teaching through spiritual disciplines. This week covered solitude and meditation. For me, this was one of those “we’re just visiting so this won’t really apply to me” mornings. I was wrong.

So wrong, in fact, that God destroyed my heart in the first 15 minutes of the service. We began singing a couple beautiful songs and already I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes. Then the music director read from the Psalms, and the verses spoke to exactly what Katie and I were dealing with. I started to feel that lump in my throat that comes with brokenness.

And then . . . silence.

The music director told everyone to close their eyes and just pray. Whatever was going on, just pray. In that moment, my heart came undone. I cried for two minutes straight, unable to utter a word to God about what I felt and what I needed, but I knew at that moment that He completely understood and was purging all this junk from within me. I hadn’t really dealt with the things that were going on, I just shelved them, said I believed God was good, and moved on. But I never really experienced that truth, I simply knew it.

Shane’s message gave shape to what I was feeling and experiencing the first part of the service. We’re so quick to learn about God, but do we really know Him? I don’t take the time to quiet myself and just experience God. J.I. Packer says that if you don’t experience God, you don’t really know Him. You just know about Him. I so desperately want to know Him.

Our culture is full of distractions, which is why I think both God and the devil don’t do a lot of miraculous stuff around us. We’re sidelined by total crap that is accessible whenever we want it.

We need to learn to be quiet, and then maybe we’ll hear the voice of God that we so desperately long for.

It seems like we have known a lot of people who have gotten divorced early in their marriage. Even Christian couples. While we don’t know all the details and we shouldn’t assume or “pick sides”, as it were, Katie and I have been able to have really good conversations about how to be proactive in fighting the things that might lead to divorce. We talk about honesty, boundaries in friendships, and above all bowing to God’s commands.

But from what I have learned in the divorces of Christian couples, the common cause is not something like infidelity or distrust, but selfishness. It seems we have forgotten the purpose of our marriages and our lives – being vessels and deliverers of God’s grace.

I have become pretty convinced that our purpose on this Earth is as simple as this: reconciliation through grace. Jesus reconciled us to God through His grace, and now we are to act in ways to reconcile others to God through our grace (given, of course, by God). We are to love enemies. Believing wives are to win over unbelieving husbands by their actions. We are to submit to our authorities even when it’s difficult. We are to display grace so that God would be made known.

When it comes to marriage, it’s not about you. It’s about the grace that you exhibit, even when it’s hard. In that, God will give to you abundantly so you can give to others.

So stop being selfish.

There’s this ironic thing that tends to happen when Katie and I try to have a romantic get-away. It’s almost never the romantic get-away we imagine. For example, this weekend we ran away to Kansas City, but I was sick and doped out on DayQuil, then the room I rented at a cutthroat rate turned out to meet the expectations of a price cut – peeling wallpaper, loud elevator just outside the room, a hallway that smelled of cheese.

But those are the memories that draw us closer together and give us wonderfully laughable memories to look back on, right? Right. Never funny at the time, though.

Regardless of the circumstances, we did have a lovely dinner and another great visit to our dear friend Aaron’s church called Jacob’s Well. What a great place. Over dinner I asked Katie, “What needs to change?”

I think we forget to ask ourselves and each other that question.

This morning, I heard a great quote from someone being interviewed on the NPR program This American Life. The interviewee was talking about his courtship and marriage, and said something so insightful:

“No one ever asks, ‘How did you two stay together?’ Everyone always asks, ‘How did you two meet?’”

Never have I been asked about what my marriage is like, or how we got through the first year. It really is, “How did you guys meet?”

So, how do we stay together? Honestly, sometimes I think we simply hold on to our vows, but I would like to think that most of the time we really pursue each other and keep our marriage focused on how God would have us act. If I am really loving Katie more than myself and sacrificing for her each day, then what else would I need to do? Unfortunately my selfishness gets in the way, but thankfully Katie is forgiving.

I am so excited for what this next year holds. We’re starting a new study of what biblical marriage looks like and how to continue to shape our relationship. Hopefully I have a more solid answer and some proof as to how we have stayed together. That is, if the question comes up.

Editor’s note: I wrote this while still having a bit of a head cold, so I apologize if there are any incomplete thoughts or if anything is repetitively repetitive.