In addition to these close friends, she wants everyone around her to feel welcome and part of the family. If you’re a friend of hers, you are treasured, remembered, and nurtured. She chooses her company as carefully as she chooses draperies and decorations. My wife is careful with who she spends time with. The Friendship Bread memory is another moment in our marriage I remember. I never asked her why we didn’t keep it ourselves then.Ĭooking moments. If we wouldn’t want it, then we shouldn’t donate it.” That’s kind and wise. “Honey, why are we fixing the things in the donation pile?” Her answer: “I don’t want to donate anything that isn’t in good condition. ![]() Imagine my surprise when I found people in our house fixing everything. We decided to throw most of it away and start over, and donate whatever we could salvage. Instead, she was positive and saw it as an “opportunity for reinvention” of our space. My wife wasn’t upset at the loss of it all. 15 Years Togetherįurniture was splintered and cracked. Our movers were awful, the worst experience we had in our many moves. The move here highlighted another one of my wife’s In fact, it was our move to Columbus from Nashville that opened our eyes into how much junk we were carting around, stuff from decades ago, some of it in boxes not opened in several moves. And it seems we moved so often that my wife put our furniture on wheels. The truth behind them was more struggle, political battles, and more work than you’d want to know. From the outside, my job promotions looked miraculous. When she left hers to fight cancer and stay home to raise our daughter. In a few months’ time, her faith began to sprout faster than her hair, and she has never wavered in her belief. It was advanced enough to require radiation and chemotherapy. I’ll never forget the doctor coming out, telling me that my wife had breast cancer, and that she was about to come out of anesthesia. Only months afterward, we were surprised again with another altering moment. Hours later, my daughter surprising the nurses by tracking me by my voice.Ī health scare. My wife’s elated cry out to me when her water broke. We remember our near panic when we received that first utility bill, wondering how we would pay it. How we managed, I’m not sure, but we did on a shoestring budget. I’m now that guy that can tell others how to make a marriage last twenty-five years.īuying our first home together. My grandmother looked in the camera and thanked my wife “for being one of us now.” Others are gone, too: aunts, friends, my other grandparents, who were so gracious that day.He’s also been gone now a few years, and yet even this very week I had a vivid dream and spoke to him. It was one of the highlights of their lives together. They were so surprised and honored to be asked. Our matron of honor and my best man that day were my grandparents. ![]() So many people who were there with us on that day twenty-five years ago are gone: Looking back, I realize the power of the moment, the importance of noticing, the beauty of mindful observation, the strength of awareness. Yes, it was exactly like one of those Hallmark movies, the story line either inspiring or sickeningly sweet, depending on your perspective. From the front of the church, I sang to her, and she walked up the aisle and then we sang a duet together. She seemed to almost float there, as if she were an angel who was given the option to become fully human and was making her choice by joining her life with mine. Only a short time later, this week in 1992, she stood in the back of a church, the light flooding in through a stained-glass window behind her. Everything slowed down for a moment, the world tipping on its axis, freezing time longĮnough to suspend us for a few seconds. I walked into a crowded room, looked up, and met eyes with the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. ![]() “A good life is a collection of happy moments.”
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