A Night in the Life of the Mellingers

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.



What’s the Mellinger home like? Well, a quick glimpse at our Monday evenings might help you get the picture. A typical Monday is likely to look something like this:

• Ben yelling, “Let my people go!” to Pharaoh Ryle.



• Ryle, the “Good Samaritan”, bandaging up a wounded Ben who had been left badly hurt on the roadside.


• Lily as Baby Jesus, or Baby Moses, or any other baby in the stories.

• Jared standing as the towering city of Jericho while Ryle and Ben marched around him 7 times, until he crumbled to the ground (at which point Ryle and Ben also “crumbled” and piled on top of Daddy…not quite how the story goes, but I guess they were taking some artistic license.)!

• Joseph (Ryle) helping Mary (Ben with a pillow stuffed in his shirt) onto a donkey (Jared) to travel to Bethlehem.

Now the reason you would find these things going on isn’t because it’s a non-stop Bible story bonanza around here…but because Monday nights are typically family nights for the Mellingers. We include several things in family night, but by far the most loved part of family night for the boys is when we act out a story from the Bible.

We usually keep this part pretty simple since the kids are still young…I (Meghan) am the narrator and I call out everyone’s lines to them, Jared plays any roles that require some muscle (Goliath, donkeys, etc), Ben plays anyone who gets to yell or is disgruntled (Moses, big brother in Prodigal son parable, etc), and Ryle being the oldest usually gets to play the most central role. It really requires very little effort or prep, but it always results in lots of laughs and the boys even learn something along the way (Jared usually quizzes them when we’re done).

Besides acting out stories from the Bible, family night will also usually include pizza or maybe breakfast for dinner; a game (Uno and Memory are popular choices); singing a hymn (we are currently learning Before the Throne of God Above); brief prayer; and sometimes a special treat like a trip to Coldstone Creamery.

Now, just so I’m clear…there’s no great acting going on here (we’re not the Floods!) and we can’t sing to save our lives (we’re definitely not the Stigoras!), but we are creating some sweet memories and having a blast together.

Getting to Know Jared

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.












One night, just shortly after Jared and I were married, I typed up this list of “Ten Things I love about my Husband.” I can still remember how his face lit up when he read it. Hopefully sharing this will help you get to know Jared a little bit better.

When I wrote this, I was just putting down some of the first things that came to my mind about Jared. But now, as I review the list, I can see that it paints a wonderful picture of biblical masculinity…displaying qualities like cherishing your wife, living with your wife in an understanding way, pursuing humility, studying God’s word, working with diligence.

How grateful I am to have married a man whose life so strongly testifies to the transforming work of the Spirit. There is simply no one I admire or respect more.


Ten Things I Love About My Husband

1. Your quickness to laugh. I think that’s why I have so much fun with you…there’s no one I laugh with more.
2. Your gentleness in conversation. You are careful and self-controlled with your words, especially when I am not. You always speak with a gentle tone, even when I’m being difficult.
3. Your love of God’s Word and His people. You invest much of your time in reading and in people. This I admire, and it inspires me to do the same. Thanks for being an example.
4. Your desire to grow and change. How thankful I am that I do not have a husband who is stubborn and stuck in his ways. Thanks for your humility that is seen in your desire to change.
5. Your tender care for me, seen in your desire to help me identify and put to death sin in my own life.
6. Your diligence in working hard. Thanks for working hard at your job and never being late or calling in sick…it’s a small thing, but it reassures me and it makes me proud. (At the time he was working night shift at a warehouse.)
7. Your love for your family especially your parents. I admire the way you honor them and invest time with them.
8. Your sharp, creative mind, which is manifested in so many things – especially in your writing and your preaching. You are such a clear thinker and it’s a blessing to me.
9. Your desire to honor me above yourself and make me happy. Thanks for seeking your joy in your wifey…this is also an example for me.
10. Your passionate pursuit of me…you regularly romance me and make me feel prized and cherished by you. You are a gift I don’t deserve!

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.

More Random Art from the Mellinger Home

Also inspired by Meghan.

Getting to Know Meghan

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 love when people get to know Meghan. I love even more when I get to tell people some of the many reasons I love her. Many of them are expressed in letters I have written to Meghan over the years. I thought sharing a letter I wrote to Meghan on November 28, 2005 might help you get to know her a little bit.


Meghan, my love,

I know I’ve told you over the past few days how much joy you bring me and the reasons why, but I want to communicate these things in writing so you can be reminded again of God’s grace in your life. These things need to go down in writing! I will never tire of pointing out the grace of God at work in you; his grace shines brightly from your life and I enjoy having the privilege of pointing out the obvious.

Meghan, you are one of the most gifted people I know – unusually gifted academically and unusually gifted athletically, and you are a very disciplined person to top it all off. I know that you truly could have advanced in any career you wanted to. I know you could be successfully competing in marathons to this day and would be approaching your prime years as an athlete.

That is why few things in life amaze me more than the choice you have made to walk away from all that you could have been to devote your life to helping me accomplish my dreams and making me a success. This is why you bring me so much joy everyday. No one else supports me the way you do; no one cares for me spiritually or physically the way you do. Your joyful support of me and your practice of biblical womanhood is a legacy that I believe will be remembered by our kids and our grandkids and others long after we are gone.

Thanks for having the passions that you do. Thanks for being committed to the tasks of motherhood and not despising the call of God on your life in this season. When I see you changing diapers and preparing meals and buying groceries and folding laundry, I often find my heart flooded with joy and gratitude to God. Your life brings me so much joy! I find myself at a loss for words when I try to thank God for you; I simply cannot thank him enough for your life.

When I think, “Where do I currently see the gospel bearing fruit and growing?” The first place my mind goes is to your life. I can’t believe that even in the midst of being a mother of 2 young boys, you have maintained your Bible–reading plan the way you have and continue to pursue growth in godliness with such exemplary diligence. This degree of commitment to God and his Word is truly rare; I am blessed to have your example and to be able to observe your love for God.

One of the areas of your life I am most excited about is how seriously you take your sin. This past week there have been several times that you have confessed sin to me – sin that I was unaware of – and you did so on your own initiative. This is one of the clearest evidences of humility imaginable. Thank you for keeping such a close watch on your life.

I love you and I’m so happy to be married to you. You are way out of my league and I thank God I get to walk through life with you by my side. It is ironic that the one with greater gifting is called to support the one with lesser gifting, and the one with lesser godliness is called to lead the one with greater godliness.

Your example and your care are irreplaceable. I love you with all my heart.

Yours forever,
Jared.

Random Art from the Mellinger Home

Our 2 boys are Ryle and Ben. We like to draw together. I use only the black crayon; they use the colors. As a father-and-sons team of artists, we find there is nothing that inspires our artistic sensibilities more than Meghan/Mama:















Of course, Meghan/Mama is not the only one to provide such inspiration.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones and Marriage

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.



Martyn Lloyd-Jones is considered by many to have been the greatest preacher and leader of the 20th century. Meghan and I love him. I mean really love him. We have both worked our way through his 2-volume, 1,000 page biography by Iain Murray, we occasionally read Lloyd-Jones’ sermons aloud to each other, and we even have a picture of him on our refrigerator!

He understood how to apply the gospel to all of life…including marriage. Here he is in his own words talking about Ephesians 5 and marriage:

"How many of us have realized that we are always to think of the married state in terms of the doctrine of the atonement? Is that our customary way of thinking of marriage?. . . Where do we find what the books have to say about marriage? Under which section? Under ethics. But it does not belong there. We must consider marriage in terms of the doctrine of the atonement." (Life in the Spirit, 148)



Our experience in our marriage has been the more we follow this instruction, the more aware we are of God’s grace and the more our love for marriage is intensified. We trust the same will be true with you.