33 Years

Yesterday was our 33rd anniversary. We had a very pleasant day together, seeing a movie and eating filet mignon at Longhorn’s. Over our sinfully delicious meal, I looked at Doug and asked him, “Can you believe we’ve been married for 33 years?” He said he could, because he can’t really remember much about the time before we were married. I guess that’s true for me, too; it seems like I’ve been married my whole life. Then he asked me if I wanted to go for 33 more years. I did the math and said, “That would make you 87 and me 86 – it’s feasible, so yeah, let’s go for it.” Of course, we have no idea if God will give each of us that many more years on this earth, but if He does, we will spend them together. I can’t imagine anything else. We are two different people and a single, inseparable unit at the same time. There is tremendous comfort in knowing that we will grow old together. I wouldn’t want to face old age alone!

In 33 years we’ve been through a lot – the whole for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health, and for better and for worse thing. There have been good years and bad years and a lot of somewhere in-between years. The good years win out. There were times when I didn’t think they would, but they did.

Probably the most difficult year was the first one. We married too young; I was still just nineteen. Both of us were self-centered and immature, with no experience of living on our own and supporting ourselves. We went from single life to married life, from rural life to city life, and childhood to adulthood all at once, and the adjustment was extremely hard. We were trying to work and go to school at the same time. Both of us were under too much stress, and we had terrible fights.

Probably the biggest mistake we made was that we stopped going to church. Our old church seemed too far away, and we were afraid of “big city churches,” so we didn’t look for a new one. We also had no friends. The few high school friends we had kept up with, had moved far away. I had too much pride to talk to my mother about my unhappiness, and my sisters were still too young to understand. I never felt so alone. I had struggled with depression since early adolescence, and now I sank into a major one. I cried, I prayed, I went for long walks by myself, and I even thought of doing myself in. The one thing I could not do was go back home; my parents would never understand. Divorce was unheard of in my family. Besides, I couldn’t admit failure. The shame would have been more than I could bear.

Then one day I made a friend. The professor in one of my classes had just returned an exam to us and made a comment about my grade being the highest one in the class. As we were leaving, a couple of girls made a very snide remark to me, something about me “ruining the curve.” Then this pretty, dark-haired girl walked up, smiled, and said, “Don’t pay any attention to them; they’re just jealous.” She introduced herself as Elizabeth. It turned out we were both catching a bus back to married housing, so we talked long enough to realize we had a lot in common. We were the same age, both newly married and living on campus, both majoring in home economics education, and both of us had grown up on a farm in a family of girls with a very strict father. And both of us were Baptists. She invited me to her church, Prince Avenue Baptist, and she seemed really excited about it. That same week, one of my professors invited us all to come to that same church. (This was an extraordinary thing to happen on the University campus!) I decided God must be trying to tell me something, and besides, I wanted a friend, so I convinced Doug to go to church with me the following Sunday night. I quickly spotted Elizabeth, wearing the green suit she would wear every Sunday for the next year since we were all so poor at the time, and she introduced us to her husband Jim. The four of us soon established a friendship that endures to this day.

We loved the church and its young pastor, Brother Bill. We found out what “preaching the Word” meant, and learned about the “spirit-filled life.” It wasn’t long before we joined the church and started going to a Sunday School class for young married couples, where we made more new friends. Life was certainly looking better. Then we went with a church group to a week-long conference held by a man named Bill Gothard. That week he spoke a great deal about marriage and family, and Doug and I soon realized we had been doing everything all wrong. We were terribly convicted about how selfish we had been. That week was a real turning-point in our marriage. We were no longer alone; we had a church family, friends, and a three-way relationship that included Jesus Christ. We were wise enough to realize we needed all that support, and when we moved with Doug’s job two years later, we quickly found another church home and have been in church ever since.

In the years that followed, there were other hardships. The greatest disappointment of our lives was realizing we could not have children, but later, the happiest moment of our married life was getting the news that we would adopt a son. I struggled with bouts of depression off and on for years; it was my personal demon. Without God, I never would have made it. He, and He alone, kept me sane. True relief finally came with the discovery of Prozac, which I foolishly avoided taking for many years. I finally realized there was no shame in admitting there could be a chemical imbalance in my brain, and that God can use doctors and medicine to answer prayer.

Our early financial struggles finally eased, and we became proud homeowners. God has truly blessed us materially. We’re not rich, never have been, and never will be, but we have also never had to worry about money since we finished school. Doug and I both found rewarding careers. We’ve enjoyed good health for almost all our married life, and so has our son. Sean has grown into a fine young man with a lovely wife of his own. I feel so blessed.

Before we were married, Doug gave me a poster. It had a picture of two chihuahuas holding onto each other. The caption read, “It’s me and you against the world.” I still have that poster somewhere up in the attic. I think it symbolizes our marriage fairly well. It’s still me and Doug, holding on despite all obstacles, and I am so glad I toughed it out during the hard times.