Forty Years and Growing

Forty years and growing!  How can it be?  John and I have been married 40 years today!  Now, that's absolutely a miracle, truly God's grace and love in action.  It's been a rough time, to say the least, but we're still together.  I'm reminded again of that song I posted last earlier this week, "Through It All."  Yep, I've learned to trust in Jesus, I've learned to trust in God!  I've learned to depend upon His word!

So, after 40 years, let me reminisce a bit.  I met John when I was 12 years old; he came to break my pony, Princess.  He worked with my Mom on the evaporator line at Gibson's.  He was married to Bev at that time and had five kids.  He and Bev would often take me to horse shows and horse auctions.  After several years, they got divorced, he asked me out, and the rest is history.

After our wedding, I learned that he had never attended a "wedding" before, that is a church wedding with all the works!  That was an eye opener for him.  And after the reception, when we went to the truck/camper to leave, we found that his friends had cut down the preacher's clothesline and tied up our truck.  They also slathered it with several comments in shaving cream.  We had to find a car wash and take care of all that before we could leave!  We soon learned that shaving cream eats into the pain.  Our truck said Congratulations on it for many months afterwards!

We went to Niagara Falls for our honeymoon.  It was fabulous.  Only spent a couple of days there, but it was a memory in the making.  When we got home, we found that our friends had shivareed our house.  They had had a party while we were gone and turned the house topsy turvey!  The tv was in the shower; the kitchen table was in the living room; we found the bed completely disassembled and spread throughout several rooms; they filled our cupboards with rice; they tied up everything with toilet paper; they vaselined all the door knobs!  I'm sure they did much more, but those are what I remembered.  Needless to say, I was overwhelmed at the mess and sat right down and cried!  But, it didn't take too long to clean it up.

We were married a year when Marie, John, and Eric came to live with us.  Here I was, 21 years old and had three teens in the house.  That was an eye opener for me!  Those were difficult years.  In looking back, I was a poor mother because I tried to do just what my mom had done and these kids had been raised much differently.  But, I got along the best I could.

Four years later, Brandon came on the scene!  I am so thankful for my son.  It's no secret that I really didn't want to have kids, but let me tell you, the moment I felt that flutter of movement in my tummy, I was in love!  And I'm still in love with my son.  He is the best thing that John and I have done!  And now the grandkids, well, that's the frosting on the cake.

Yep, the years have been difficult, but we've stuck together.  Life is more like an old slipper now.  We're getting old, getting forgetful, slowing down, and just overlooking each other's idiosyncracies.  At times, we've just learned to ignore each other!  No, we've not had the storybook romance and marriage that some may have had, but we've weathered 40 years.  There numbers of couples who can say that in this day and age have certainly dwindled.

And so, here's to more years together.  I pray that God will truly have His hand in our marriage, that each of us can and will surrender our will to God and that, in doing that, we can and will surrender our will to each other.

So, happy anniversary to us today!

Till we meet again,

Leslie Anne