Thirty years ago today

  I remember when we first met.  He had on a vest with pins and buttons all over it, red permed hair, leather arm bands  with spikes and a earring clip dangling  was with his mom and they came through my line at K-mart.  He worked there too.  He asked me if I wanted to go to a Haunted House with him.  I had not  ever been to a haunted house and I have not still to this day. I wasn't' sure though I wanted to go anywhere with him.  People laugh when I say this but I was kind of afraid of him.  Some people from work decided to try and talk me into going with him.  They decided to go as a group and several promised they would take care of me.  .   So we went to eat and then instead of the haunted house we went bowling.  That gave him reason to laugh with me for the next 30 years cause I lost the ball, it flew backwards off my hand.

We were young and dumb and for the next six months broke up with each other I don't know how many times.  Mainly because we got our dating advice from the employees of K-mart, not from God.  This was not a blue light special it was important it should have been nurtured and guided through prayer but like I said, we were young and dumb.

Thirty years ago today he asked me to marry him.  It was an Easter Sunday and of all places we were at Po' Folks restaurant. Do you remember those?  His family where all there for it was Easter and they where having family dinner.  Maybe not the most romantic of proposals but it worked.  Our parents said we would never make it.   There is a Stangenberg curse I was told no man in the Stangenberg family ever stayed married to one woman.  Instead of making me run it made me more determined to prove them wrong.

Thirty years later we almost have things right, we spend more time on our knees then we did then.  God comes first not his guitar, and his family we are a close second.  He has been there with me through 20 plus surgeries and I have been there for him during the hardest seasons of his life.
He is my best friend and I am honored to be his wife.  We have both made mistakes and we have hurt each other and their have been times neither of us where sure we were going to make it.  We did and we will.  For I am convince with out a shadow of a doubt that God put us together.  What God has put together no man can put under.

God has blessed us with a wonderful son, who some how turned in to a wonderful Christian man despite of our failures as parents. Some times I say we taught him more on how not to do something then we did the right way.  We have a beautiful daughter in law that God gave us.  We are certainly blessed. We are members of a wonderful Church, that still teaches and preaches marriage, morals, manners, and family among other important things.
   I love you Honey.  Thanks for being my friend, my protector, and the Lord of our home.  I am glad we have grown up together and we will grow old together even though some times we still reap from being young and dumb.  God has never left us or forsaken us even the seasons we left Him.