The Lovely Meghan Claire

Editors Note: This week on the Family Life Blog, we are getting a closer look at the Mellingers. Jared and Meghan have joined together to provide us with little windows into their marriage, their family, and their own hearts. Check back each day for the next installment.


I can still remember sitting in a small diner in Kutztown, PA on a cold night in February of 2000. I was 19 years old; Meghan was turning 21 that weekend. As a poor college student, I couldn’t afford much more of a birthday gift than the paper to write her a poem and the postage stamp to get it to her.

So that night I wrote a very simple poem for Meghan, called “The Lovely Meghan Claire”. It began, “A single score and one ago/ When I was not around to know/ A flower first began to grow/ The Lovely Meghan Claire.”

Since then I have written another installation of the poem each year for Meghan’s birthday. It has become “The Lovely Meghan Claire: An Ongoing Poem Celebrating Her Birth and Life.” One of the moments we both look forward to each year is when we go out to eat to celebrate Meghan’s birthday, and I read the full poem, ending with the newest addition for that year.

To give you a window into our marriage and to inspire your own romantic endeavors, here are the sections I wrote for Meghan’s 24th and 25th birthdays:

XXIV

A single score and four. Once more
Recall the goodness of the Lord
Who gave a gift worth more than gold
The Lovely Meghan Claire.

If asked, “A great wife who can find?”
My voice you’d hear not far behind
To speak of excellence defined
The Lovely Meghan Claire.

Why praise her? For she’s “to be praised”
Her strength and dignity outweigh
All others and her hands amaze
The Lovely Meghan Claire.

Her open mouth lets wisdom run
She’s learned to laugh at days to come
Who taught me Proverbs Thirty-One?
The Lovely Meghan Claire.


XXV

A single score and five have passed
The seed was sown; the stem grew fast
And soon around me twined at last
The Lovely Meghan Claire.

Now I am hers and she is mine!
And she’s become my fruitful vine
Where olive shoots spring up and dine
The Lovely Meghan Claire.

But better still, to Christ she holds.
His glory makes her tendrils gold
And gives us grace as we grow old
The Lovely Meghan Claire.

The vine is now too strong to fret
The winter weather or to let
The rays of scorching heat upset
The Lovely Meghan Claire.