60 years?! Really???-YES...Really!!

(I will find and share pictures later when that is fixed  for me to do so!)

Weathering the storms of life...together

Yesterday we sat and talked about our family celebration in July celebrating our long-lived marriage.  We talked about a lot of things...

-how thankful we are for each other and how thankful we are that we have weathered all the varied weather in our lives be it stormy or balmy or whatever and we are thankful that we still love each other.
-how amazing it is that two 18 year-olds could get married with no fear of anything and no plans for anything and all they had was wildly passionate love.  We didn't care about anyone else except us.  We loved to be together and like kids we loved to dance and go to movies and spend every minute together.  As long as we had each other we needed no one else!
-how we wanted a baby immediately and within 3 months a baby was on the way.  We adored this child!  We could not get enough of him.  We prepared all sorts of baby things for him.  Neither of us knew a thing about babies except that we loved babies and we wanted one of our own!  What a winner he was!!  and is!
-how wonderful to think we ended up with 5 children.  We thought they would all be the same kind of people like manufactured cookies and we were shocked to learn they were individuals and one of a kind.  We thought love was all that was needed and we'd just live happy ever after like all fairy tales!  Silly kids!  SillyUs not the actually kids!
-how we learned and how we love each of these marvelous people and their families!

We talked about changes we've seen and history we've witnessed in our time together...
-Alaska Statehood.  Fall of the Berlin Wall.  Fall of the Iron Curtain.  Assassination of President Kennedy & his brother Robert Kennedy & Martin Luther King & NYC Twin Towers & school shootings & on and on with horrors that we would never have imagined.  &&& etc.

We talked about our life in the Church.  The Church.  Joining the Church and all the problems that came into our life because of that decision.  Such division and rejection and yet such richness and joy and conviction of truth.  Our Church.  The binding faith that has held us together with the desire and hope of marriage forever!!

We talked about changes and advances for such greatness and goodness and the fact it is also used for evil in this incredible era of technology.  How wonderful to be in touch with the world happenings and to know of places and people that we previously had no knowledge of.

We talked about the last days and signs of the times and Church growth and how much we appreciate having access to all things Churchy on our computers.

We talked about the rush in today's world and how simple our children's lives were and how thankful we are for that isolation and in ways struggles with making a life as ill-prepared and un-prepared pioneers of sort.  We are so thankful for strength gained in our shared life experiences and how strong our children are...what hard workers they are.  Not a lazy one in the bunch!

We talked about thankfulness for our small old single-level home and that we can still hobble along and be independent on major life tasks.  We love where we are in life right now even though we have health issues, as our LifeExpiration date appears to not be, as once thought, indelible but is fading.  We have so much to be thankful for and kind and caring children, and also grandchildren, is a part of that good feeling.

We talked about our wedding and how neither of us remember planning anything.  All I knew was I wanted to be married on a Sunday, in a Church, in a white wedding gown.  We picked the prettiest Church in Anchorage.  It might have been the only Church!  We'd never gone to Church so it sounds rather superficial but really I think, in looking back, that even then I realized it meant a lot to me to have Church/God in my marriage.  I remember feeling young and awkward and wishing there weren't people in the Church for the wedding.  I was wishing it was just Terry and no one else there. My emotions must have shown on my face as I was standing there holding my Daddy's arm to go down the aisle and he looked at me and said...Honey, you don't have to do this if you don't want to.  

Terrified... but I went.  There have been times over the last 60 years that I have remembered that brief conversation and have seriously thought...should I have walked out the back door and not down the aisle?

Yesterday we also talked about things that only the two of us know about...times of great romantic passion that was wonderful in our remembering the specifics of times and places,  and times of great pain and heartache and grief we inflicted on each other... and we both agreed that we are so thankful that our love has endured.  We are grateful for each other.  Thankfully we endured and survived growing out of our teens to young adults to adults and now to aging swans!  

We are in love.  sigh.