On Our 30th Wedding Anniversary

 

I remember it as though it happened yesterday, and with my ever-increasing age and ever-diminishing memory that’s saying something special.  

 

It was a warm August night 33 summers ago. I walked up the steps of the Evangelical Free Church of Fullerton, California, and saw her for the first time ever.  She had a beauti />ful and quick smile, pretty blue eyes, long and straight brown hair, golden brown skin under little makeup, a simple cotton summer dress and sandals. We were introduced by others: a girl I had been seeing had made a new friend on a church backpacking trip: as she described the gal over the phone I remember thinking, “Wow, I’d like to meet her.”<span style=  So, intending to introduce her new friend to a buddy of mine, I knew as soon as I’d met Nancy Diane Carroll that she was the one, instead, for me. I was 18 and she was 16. We enjoyed church together that night and then stopped for pizza with a group of friends. 

 

My wife was the third and last child - and only daughter - of Howard and Lois Carroll, godly Christians and former missionaries who had been with Mission Aviation Fellowship for 13 years, two of them in

Indonesia . Her parents, both of whom were wonderful people, welcomed me very cordially into their family. 

 

That first date must have been kind of a shock to my future in-laws: I roared up in a brand new Ford LTD, a long hideous mess of a motor vehicle borrowed from my boss at an advertising agency where I was kind of the fl />unky/intern.<span style=  I was dressed way up, which is to say – this being the 70’s - that I looked ridiculous: everything was tight, flared and funka-liscious. I wore shoes with giant big chunky heels, giant glasses that appeared to have been stolen from a myopic circus clown and a giant ‘fro that nearly blocked the sun on late afternoons.  I was a blond surfer dude –most popular at my high school – in the body of a very pale, low-budget, poorly-cast blaxploitation movie star. 

 

It gets worse: not only did I screech into the Carroll’s cul-de-sac looking like an 11 year-old playah from the white suburban hood, I actually wore – and up to now I don’t know that I’ve ever had the moral courage or strength of self-concept to put this in actual print –  

 

In spite of my appearance,

Nancy ’s parents did not turn me away at gunpoint an />d so I have been blessed to be married to my best friend for all these many years. Since our wedding day (the funnest day of our lives) and through good times and bad she has stuck by my side and has been a wonderful wife to me and mother to our three children. It hasn’t all been peaches and cream: I’m not the easiest guy to live with, and being a pastor’s wife is no walk in the park. Nonetheless, she has been a very faithful companion, an earnest discipler of women, and a terrific educator of our homeschooled kids.<span style=  Facing the very painful physical problems she’s endured for these last months hasn’t often been that hard for me since it has been an opportunity for me to give a little more to a helpmate who has sacrificed so much for her family. 

 

You know why I remember that day I first laid eyes on her so well?  I remember the way she looked then because she hasn’t changed a bit – except to get even cuter.

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