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Musings: Love–Our Wedding Anniversary

A few weeks ago Richard and I celebrated twenty eight years of marriage.  I began the day in my usual fashion, out on the lanai having my quiet time with God.  My husband was inside having his quiet time too, and through the open door I could feel the connection as we each experienced our own unique relationship with God.  As I read my various daily reflections, the meaning of that day slowly sank in. 

We had known each other for almost twenty nine years.  I met Richard towards the end of July 1983, and we married on 24 March 1984.  It was a bit of a scary time for me.  I had been married once before for almost ten very unhappy years and it had been ten years since I had separated and consequently divorced that man.  I had lived much of that previous marriage emotionally alone, and had become very independent and self-sufficient in the ensuing ten years.  Oh, and did I mention that Richard is almost twenty years my junior??

I thought back to that time after Richard asked me to marry him and remembered how much praying and self-questioning I went through.  I had also insisted that we speak with the priest and go through counseling, and then I went on a retreat to distance myself from the relationship for forty eight hours, just to have some clarity and see if I had any different thoughts and feelings about the situation.  After doing everything I thought I should do to be sure of how I felt, we went ahead and married.

I sat there on the twenty fourth of March this year with a very full heart as I traveled back in time, and the prevailing thought was “where had all those twenty eight years gone?”.  The words from a well-known Christian song came to mind: “in the blink of an eye”.  As I said goodbye to Richard that morning (he had a day-long class he had to attend), I remembered our first real kiss. It had me blushing for a moment because it was a very incredible and passionate kiss and I remember thinking that I could just have floated off in that kiss all those years ago.  But it was also a very tender kiss, and I think that’s what sold me on Richard from the very first – he was such a tender person.  Tender-hearted as a person as well as tender towards me, and others.

If I needed any other evidence of the years we have been together, we have a twenty seven-year old daughter, Melissa, who is proof-positive that all those “blink-of-an-eye” years really existed. I remember very well appearing in a play, The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, when I was about six months pregnant with her, and my eldest son, Marco, from my first marriage, break dancing day in and day out during the pregnancy.  Melissa was born to the rhythm of break dance.

While Richard was in class, I got on with my day and couldn’t help but notice in great detail the contents of our home, which is something between an art gallery and a curio shop.  There are paintings and photos all over the walls.  The paintings come from many different places that either Richard has travelled to during his years in the Navy or that we both have travelled to together.  Then there are the statues and figurines that cover every shelf and available surface throughout the house.  Many people are quite taken aback when they visit our home for the first time because of all “the stuff”.  But everything is a joyful representation of the years that we have been together and the memories that we have created.

When Rich came home from class, we got ready to go out and celebrate our anniversary.  First we went to the El Apache restaurant to enjoy a delicious Mexican meal.  With tummies pleasantly full we then headed over to the Thrasher-Horne Center for Arts to see a show.  A few weeks earlier, at a silent auction fund-raiser at our church, we had won the bid on two tickets for The Peking Acrobats which were dated twenty four March.  I think the only reason we bid on them was because the date was the same as our anniversary.  The show was quite breathtaking and very exciting and it was a great way to celebrate the day.

However, we didn’t quite finish the celebrations at that point.  Instead of heading home, Richard pointed the car in the other direction.  You see, he has an absolute weakness for Shakes, a small drive up cubicle that sells shakes and sundaes made with frozen custard.   And so we completed our evening enjoying our favorites: for Rich this was a strawberry milkshake, extra thickSmile; for me it was a kiddy-cup with one small scoop of vanilla frozen custard topped with a healthy drizzle of caramel – yumSmile.  A perfect finish to a perfect evening, and here’s to number twenty nine!!

Shared Wisdom: It’s All About God

Because many of the circles or groups of friends that I frequent are full of people who live on a similar spiritual wavelength to myself, I seem to gather many quotations about God or things Christian.  I also receive many spiritually based books as gifts which are full of God-quotations.  I realize that not everybody is Christian.  However I also realize that many people live very spirit-filled lives and can relate to many of these quotations, even the ones that specifically use the term God.  So I invite everyone to just be open and adapt the following words in ways that can be meaningful to you.

 

“Be patient.  Our prayers are always answered, but not always on the exact day we’d like them to be.                                                                                                (Marjorie Turner)

 

“A visitor saw a nurse attending to the sores of a leprosy patient.  ‘I would not do that for a million dollars,’ she said.  The nurse answered, ‘Neither would I, but I do it for nothing for Jesus.’”  (Corrie ten Boom)

 

“Be sure to remember that nothing in your daily life is so insignificant and so inconsequential that God will not help you by answering your prayer.”                                      (Ole Hallesby)

 

“If there are a thousand steps between us and God, He will take all but one.  He will leave the final one for us.  The choice is ours.”                                                          (Max Lucado)

 

“The great thing to remember is that, though our feelings come and go, His love for us does not.”                                                                                                        (C.S.Lewis)

 

“God doesn’t call the qualified, He qualifies the called.”                                                                                                                                                                  (Anonymous)

 

“If God would have wanted us to live in a permissive society He would have given us Ten Suggestions and not Ten Commandments.”                                                          (Zig Ziglar)

 

“If God had wanted to be a big secret, He would not have created babbling brooks or whispering pines.”                                                                                                 (Robert Brault)

 

“I could not say I believe.  I know!  I have had the experience of being gripped by something that is stronger than myself, something that people call God.”                            (Carl Jung)

 

“No God, no peace. Know God, know peace.”                                                                                                                                                                               (Anonymous)

 

“What God intended for you goes far beyond anything you can imagine.”                                                                                                                                          (Oprah Winfrey)

 

“After God created the world, He made man and woman.  Then, to keep the whole thing from collapsing, He invented humor.”                                                                   (Guillermo Mordillo)

 

“There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, "’Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, ‘All right then, have it your way.’                                                  (C.S. Lewis)

 

“People see God everyday, they just don’t recognize Him.”                                                                                                                                                            (Pearl Bailey)

 

May God bless you all.

Vignette: Lunch At Arby’s

After our four enjoyable days with our friends Sherry and Greg in Minnesota, Rich and I loaded up the Harley and set off on the next leg of our adventure.  We headed west from Brainerd toward North Dakota.  The scenery started changing as we approached the border between the two states, becoming flatter and less green.

As was our norm, we stopped for a break and a tank up after about an hour and a half of riding.  Then we continued for about the same amount of time until our tummies told us it was time to get some lunch.  We had noticed that the exits had grown further apart and offered very few food options, so as soon as we saw an Arby’s we decided to pull off.  We are not big “fast-food” eaters, but Arby’s passes muster for a quick lunch.

Once inside, I made my food choices and left Rich to pick up the order while I went to choose a table from which we could keep an eye on the bike.  There was only one other couple in the restaurant, and they were seated about three tables away from our window table.  They were an older couple and the husband was in a wheelchair, and I could hear them talking quietly from time to time.

Rich bought our order to the table and we quickly got organized and ready to eat.  Then, as always, we held hands and thanked God for a safe trip so far, asked him to continue to bless and protect us, to bless the food and continue to feed us spiritually.  Then it was time to dig in and eat up. 

I guess we were about half way through our meal when I became aware that the woman from the other couple was clearing away their things.  Suddenly she was standing beside us and, leaning in toward us, she apologized for interrupting us.  We said, no problem, and she carried on talking to let us know why she had come over.

She explained that she was “one of us” and that it had really warmed her heart to see us praying over our food before we began eating.  She said that sometimes it was very hard to be a Christian because she felt we were in a minority.  She also said that not many people were willing to be public about their belief in God and that as we prayed we had allowed her to feel as though she were “not alone”.  It was a very warm moment of fellowship and my heart went out to her.

Rich agreed with her and told her that just a week or so ago we had done the same thing as she had.  We had been having a meal at one of our favorite salad bars, “Sweet Tomatoes”, when a woman and her two daughters came and sat at the table across the aisle to us.  Once they had settled into the booth, they all bowed their heads and said a prayer of blessing over their food.  I remember how heart-warming it felt for us to see that, and as we left the restaurant Rich had paused briefly at their table to let them know how great it had been to witness that.

We exchanged farewells with the woman, and as she pushed her husband out of Arby’s I wondered what their story was.  We feel very blessed to have met certain people, complete strangers, on our ride who have uplifted us and shared a God-moment with us.  And I remembered that other couple in the rest stop parking lot in Tennessee who had cared enough about us to pray for our safety as we began our long trip.

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