Tuesday, December 2, 2014

December 2, 2014

It's our 42nd wedding anniversary today.

I've been married 2/3 of my entire life!

 And I think I can count on one hand the number of times we have spent our anniversary day together or really celebrated those milestones.

We have a different sort of life.

Today it was entertaining the Canton Study Club for our Christmas meeting at Litengard, then planning, shopping, preparing for church Christmas decorations which go up tomorrow, and Rob did his surgery cases, went to Cantata practice, and is back in the OR with a patient who has a ruptured appendix.

But the day doesn't really matter.

It's the years.

The years of sharing our lives with each other; the joys of starting a family and watching them grow, of moving to a totally different cultural area, of traveling the country and the world, of doing ministry together inside the church and the community, of studying the Word together and reading books and poetry to each other,  of starting businesses, planting gardens, teaching homeschool, vacationing, entertaining, attending meetings, decorating, painting, moving furniture, washing dishes and going to bed absolutely exhausted!.   It's the sharing of the pain of the losses we all face in the death of our parents and siblings, the loss of a beloved son in law, and the uncertainty of an unfavorable diagnosis, temporary discouragements and frustrations. projects gone wrong, failures in communication and misunderstood intentions and motivations.  We do it together.

And we can finish each others sentences.  And send each other the same cards!

Rob is everything I wanted in a man.  He's loyal and faithful and honest.  He's not flashy or arrogant.  And he thinks I'm beautiful and creative, even on my worse days.  He's smarter than I.  Actually, he's the smartest person I know and can speak with anyone on a multitude of subjects.  He knows baseball like the back of his hand, stats just start pouring out....just ask Tom and Colin, but football, hockey and basketball are not unfamiliar to him.   History, especially English and European are his specialties.  Music, he can keep up with the best of our Crane friends.  He can still do complicated math, science, and physics, and is a great teacher, just ask our boys.  He's a plumber, an electrician, a builder, a problem solver.  And he is a tremendous surgeon.  And most of all, he has followed the Lord for over 60 years now.  That's what I was looking for in a man.

I've been thinking about our 42 years together.  It's a long time, a lot of experiences, and we're still together, plodding onward and upward.   We have faith in each other.   We trust each other.  We trust each other with our time, our money, our activities, our lives, our commitments, our relationships.  I think that's a big factor.  It's freeing, liberating and restorative.

So, Happy Anniversary Rob.  We did say that to each other when we met briefly for soup tonight.  I'm excited to see what's in store for us, starting our 43rd year together.