My Husband!!

Yesterday, yes 9/11, was Jim's birthday, and today is a day of reflection for me.  We met on a youth group hayride – we were sixteen, and life has not been the same since.  Oh, we had our ups and downs, before and after we got married – we are still human, but it will have been fifty years this fall since we “started talking.”

I had in my mind some things I was looking for in a boyfriend/ husband back then, and those things are still important, starting with respect.  He had to be the kind of man I would respect.  Well, my Jim was a Boy Scout.  No!, the real thing – a Star Scout and Chief of the Order of the Arrow. (Boy Scout people will understand what that is.)  Honestly, he would probably have attained the rank of Eagle Scout if it hadn’t been for that hayride. 

He cared about people, and that was reflected in his election as president of the student body of his high school.  His leadership qualities showed themselves early on and that was important to me – not that he was president, we went to different high schools, but that he was a leader.  I knew I needed a leader.

I needed to feel confident that this man, with whom I would spend my life, would be able to take care of me – physically, emotionally, spiritually…well, you get the idea.  I needed to have confidence that I would be safe with him.  I know you may think this is a little late to mention, but he had to be a believer, someone who cared about God’s will for his life – and mine. He remembers me telling him, when we were first dating, that I was going to the mission field, and he could come too if he wanted.  You can see we talked about a lot of things.

I guess, as I think about all of this, I am concerned that young women today do not think about some of these issues as they date and marry.  I fear too many yield to the pressures they feel to be “in a relationship” that they don’t give serious thought to what it would be like to spend their entire lives with this one man. 

This morning someone posted the words of Isabel Allende on facebook: “Write what should not be forgotten.”  I’ve been thinking about it ever since I read it, and then considered – what are the words that should not be forgotten?  I think the words that we say, that we will love and honor, and for a lot of us, obey our husbands are pretty important words.  And we need to remind young women that you don’t stay married happily if you don’t first mean, and then live out those words. 

But today I just want to honor my husband – for being a man of God, my leader, the one who has loved me as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it.