Looking back to my eighteenth year of life when I first fell in love with my Coach Wonderful it is difficult to admit but I was dumber than a box of rocks when it came to love and relationships. I thought all there was to love was feeling it inside my heart. Once that happens a person should get married and live happily ever after. I know, I know, that’s enough to gag a rhinoceros but that was the extent of my wisdom back then. Imagine my surprise to the realities of life.
I had been in love for months and thought I’d been very patient through that protracted period of dating with no talk of marriage. The irresistible necessity to give hints welled up inside me. One night while ordering a meal at a Chinese restaurant as Coach Wonderful perused the menu, he casually asked me, "So. . . How do you like your rice? Boiled? Or fried?" Without missing a beat, I peered over my menu at him and replied pithily, "Thrown." Well that went right over his head! I found I had to be more explicit with my hints. “So, how many children would you like to have?” When he said four I knew it was a match made in heaven – I wanted four! I mean really what more does a person need to know? I loved him and he wanted four children the same as me! Oh, and by the way, the first time we held hands through an evening vespers service his hands didn’t sweat! I was a sucker for dry hands. There’s a really valuable measuring stick for marriage. Scary to think we started a life together based on little else. We needed a Savior!
After a whole year of dating we were wed on the 29th day of December 47 years ago in the sweet little village of Hartsdale, NY. Across from the canine cemetery (somehow that would be prophetic) stood a quaint old church where we participated in a miracle. It would be several decades before we would comprehend the size of the miracle needed to hold two people together, much less become one. Weddings are a dime a dozen. (That's just an old expression not the cost) I've got two brothers that have had seven weddings between them. So anyone can have a wedding but only God can create a marriage. In the early going the 'my way’ thing and being a ‘right’ fighter turns into the battle of the egotists and it's an I for an I. Through the struggles and the joys, the hurts and the healings, and the tug a wars and the victories we learned marriage prepares you to serve the Lord. You can’t grow a marriage without dieing to yourself and your ways nor can you serve the Lord.
Where God resides He provides and guides.
The LORD will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail. (Isaiah 58:11)
A pearl to string and the secret to a long marriage: If you wait for a person, or an event or a provision you will grow weary and hopeless if it is a long process But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint. (Isaiah 40:31, KJ)
If the grass is greener on the other side of the fence,
you can bet the water bill is higher.
Dying to yourself is like a God directed prescribed burn. It clears out the underbrush of self and improves the hungering and thirsting of your soul while strengthening temptation deliverance and seriously reducing the noxious weeds of daily life. It never gets easier to die to yourself and there always seems to be another deeper layer of pride in me that needs to die. I am amazed at what the Lord has done in our lives together. We are God's miracle. To pledge your life to another is indeed an act of faith that requires belief in miracles.
Happy Anniversary my love
Swinging on the vine of life,
Lyndi
And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. (Romans 5:5, NIV)
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