(this is a long one, much longer than I usually prefer to post, but my beautiful wife deserves every word and I need to confess every word so, without apology, here it is. If you have a couple extra minutes then push through to the end. You might find it extremely encouraging.)

Life is a mystery, God is good, and for over eleven years running—Tina remains His single greatest gift to me.

These are significant confessions for me at this moment, having just weathered a thick fog of discouragement that has only been growing thicker for the last several weeks. I’ll not burden you with the details except to say that when you combine piles of work that I’m way behind on (sorry everyone who’s waiting, I’m getting to it as fast as I can) with relational wounds and an invasive sense of fruitlessness and marginalization, then you have in Dean, a recipe for depression that can consume what small glimmers of light and oxygen remain like a star whose mass is collapsing into a black hole. Thank God … and Tina … that fog has now broken.

When? Well, I’ve noticed it thinning over the last few days but just this morning a gust of fresh Wind caught me entirely by surprise and ushered in the sun again.

Before I can explain how this happened I must first give you some context. Just about six months ago Tina embarked on a quest to transform her body from what was (beautiful, by the way) into what she has always hoped it could be (more beautiful, leaner, tighter, stronger). So, despite the risk of possibly proving her greatest fear—that no amount of effort could ever make a noticeable, lasting change in her—she boldly gave herself to a discipline of diet and exercise that rivals the training regimen of any competitive athlete. I can testify that this was no simple journey. The going was slow. The learning curve was difficult and sometimes frustrating. It took a good deal of trial and error to find her body’s “path”. In addition, things like this require a substantial time commitment and there were periods where other priorities suffered neglect as Tina struggled to work through the balancing act of a radically changed schedule. Finally, there were outside voices that attempted to dissuade her, trivializing her goals as shallow, criticizing any point of stumbling, and demeaning her zeal by renaming it obsession. In the early days, to my shame, I confess my voice was among them.

Somehow, despite all this, she managed to push through. But in the last couple of weeks, for reasons not entirely clear to either of us, she fell into an emotional exhaustion and discouragement toward her physical training that was rivaling my discouragement at life in general. She woke up feeling fat, out of shape, and as she put it, feeling like she was “back at square one.” Jealous again of other women whose body types naturally tend toward thin, she was beginning to feel cynical and hopeless about huge efforts and minimal results. Even our fancy “body fat” scale (now proven defective) couldn’t decide whether she had lost or gained. That didn’t help. Of course, I and others have told her how much change we’ve seen yet what she heard (people just being “nice”) was not what she felt was true. It must be said here—for the benefit of those who’ve never taken such a journey—that Tina’s doubts and discouragement are not so easily dismissed as petty emotional weakness. Very few people ever expect so much from their bodies, even fewer ever attempt to fulfill those expectations. Only those few that have traveled that path can truly understand the mental, physical and emotional mountains that stand in the way.

But today was different. Today, an undeniable voice broke through, for both of us.

The well established guidelines for body fat percentages in women in their 30’s are as follows: optimal is considered 22-28%; low, 18-21%; high, 29-35%; extremely high (obese), 36% and up; extremely low (competitive athlete), 17% and below. Six months ago Tina’s body fat was tested at 26%, respectably within normal health parameters. This morning, six challenging months later, she tested at … drum roll please … 17.4%! What can I say but “Wow!” which, by the way, is also what I say every time I look at her.

I was overjoyed to hear the news. Overjoyed for Tina, and so proud of her, but also—and here’s the deeper point of it all—strangely and unexpectedly encouraged myself. Suddenly, her entire training journey blazed to life as analogous to my own struggles. Choosing something very different than most, the long uphill fight, voices of descent, inner turmoil, costly mistakes, pain, exhaustion, high expectations, difficulty in quantifying results, slow change—often too slow to notice. These are not unfamiliar aspects of my life. So then, despite her extremely compelling negative emotions, when Tina’s physical journey is PROVEN successful (17.4%) then it gives me pause to re-evaluate how I’ve been seeing things.

In short, Tina has grown to love working out. She’s proven her love by acting on it and following through. By doing. And despite all the struggles, turmoil, challenges and disappointments that come from doing anything associated with life or health in this dying, broken world—her love got it done. It may not happen as quickly as we’d like, but love gets it done. The world may not be changing as quickly as we like, but love will get it done.

I think Tina and I often struggle with discouragement because of our high expectations for life and for ourselves. We’ve chosen to live an unconventional life, one that not many live, and as romantic as this may sound it sometimes leaves us feeling hopelessly lost at sea. Our own brokenness and that of the world around us seems at times so daunting as to make any effort to the contrary seem utterly futile. But it is at breakthrough moments like these (amazingly, an answer to my recent prayers that God has been preparing for me through Tina for at least six months) that I am reminded that the only futility in life is in pursuing the wrong things or not pursuing anything at all. No matter how little the apparent progress or how many failures you experience, when “life” is pursued, progress is happening. It is a universal law. Be encouraged, choose life (that is: love it enough to act) and you will achieve. Love never fails. Love gets it done.

I remember Jesus saying that there is a trust, a faith, that can command mountains to be thrown into the sea. Until recently—maybe as recently as this morning—I always imposed an immediate expectation to that miraculous kind of faith—visions of an entire mountain rising up at once. But perhaps the whole point of that illustration is THAT the mountain is moved, not how fast it is moved.

Despite its brokenness, the universe was—and still is—designed to be moved by love. If you can trust love, and cling to the One who is love incarnate, you can do anything. I think this is the faith I’ve been called to. The faith that believes, despite the current circumstances or “evidence” to the contrary, love IS at work and love WILL indeed get it done. This is the faith (trusting Love’s unfailing power) that has always moved mountains … even when it’s only one shovelful at a time.

Congratulations Tina! I celebrate with you and I celebrate you. Thank you for pushing through with me. Thank you for choosing a bold journey. Thank you for not giving up. Thank you Tina, my beautiful wife, for living a God story in front of me. You are powerful magic. Because of you, today I still believe. I love you.

You saved me.