i live in a classic love story

So Jacob worked seven years to pay for Rachel. But his love for her was so strong that it seemed to him but a few days. (Genesis 29:20 NLT)

I live in a classic love story.

I met my wife in 1969 at a bowling alley in Pasadena, TX, where several churches had gone after a youth rally.

I walked in, a woman who was a well-known matchmaker snatched me up almost bodily and put me into the midst of 5 girls. I married one of them.

I loved her from the start. She took a few weeks but soon discovered that she liked me as much as I liked her. we got along great. We had many of the same interests and even went  to the same church after I moved to Houston that spring.

She was a pretty girl who didn’t know it. She had always considered herself plain and dumpy. She was neither. She was certainly not a supermodel or anything like that, but she had a quiet, pure beauty that was instantly attractive to me.

She amazed her friends by going from 0-60 in no time. She had a boyfriend that was a steady one and, not only that, was older (2 years), was working (for the telephone company), had an apartment (which she was always afraid to go into) and a car (1962 Mercury Meteor with a crumpled driver rear fender). I was tall, and large (although not that much by today’s standards – 6’2” and 200 pounds), I was interesting, played the guitar (badly) and had an interesting job (taking money out of pay phones).

She even went on a date on a Tuesday night, something almost unheard of. Suddenly she had a date any time she wanted one, someone to go to stuff with, even a date to the formal Jr/Sr Banquet held each year by the Houston area Churches of Christ. She wore a yellow formal with long white gloves and I wore a white dinner jacket, not unlike James Bond himself.

Her ultimate plans were to go to a Christian college and find a missionary. She would marry him and go somewhere – Africa, maybe.

She found me instead.

When I was drafted into the army in 1969, we had been going together for five months. I had taught her how to drive a standard transmission in the interim. A lot of girls in that time learned like she did. I had my arm around her in the car (bench seats), and I would operate the clutch while she shifted. She learned fast and I had a good time with her.

We had a good time the whole time we were going together. I don’t guess we had one argument that amounted to much.

Well, there was the time when I bought a mustache and wore it. She didn’t like that. This was in the days when hippies were feared by The Man, so guys would buy fake mustaches and sideburns to wear on the weekends after work. They looked good, better in fact than my own did at the time. I came into body hair later.

She had a flat in her family car and I picked her dad up to go get her and get another tire. I wore the mustache. No one commented on it, which I thought was weird. After we were going home, she was sitting on the far edge of her seat. She informed me that if I were to wear that, she would sit over here. No mention of leaving me, just sitting far from me.

I took it off, but grew one in the army to come home and get married in. She got glasses (cat’s eye), so we both had something new to show the other. We got married anyway.

She always loved me. She always showed it. We had our moments of friction when we were first married, but we have been married for over 40 years.

She went off to college while I was away in the service. But she came home to me. She wouldn’t go to bed with me or anything else until we were married. And I loved her for it.

We married me in 1971 and we went to Germany together for six months, the rest of my service and almost starved with me there in an apartment smaller than my living room now.

But we loved each other.

Ours is a classic marriage. I am the one who brings home the paycheck and she is the one who is the homemaker. She has worked occasionally when we needed it, but in general, she has been our homemaker.

I have always been grateful for her. I had a time of foolishness but it was overlooked and forgiven and I have always loved her. of all the girls I could have gotten, she is the top of the line.

As she has gotten older, she has gotten better looking. In fact, as she has progressed in her MS, she has gotten sweeter and kinder and more loving.

If I had it to do again, I would marry her a second time. And I would love her harder when I was young.

She is good, a good person, and that is rare. It is hard to find someone who is truly good. I have what other men die for. I have known so many men who were dying for the love of a good woman, one who would stay by them and love them no matter what, who would stick by them through thick and thin.

She has taken our marriage vows seriously and truly loves me.  She follows me wherever I go and loves the churches I pastor even when they turn on me.

She is truly a good woman. And I do not know how I could be blessed as I am.

I will take care of her as long as she lives, or as long as I live, whichever comes first.

I do know that I will never leave her, nor ever desert her. I will pack her scooter into and out of the van, I will cook for her and help her clean, I will help her up and down the stairs, I will love her, and treasure her.

She is my life.