Today is my husband’s 79th birthday. I met Bob for one day when I was 13 and he was a 20-year-old Marine all decked out in his dress blues (How handsome!). He had come to take the Garcia’s daughter (to whom he was engaged) to her high school graduation. I was babysitting the younger brothers. I didn’t meet him again until I was 19. His engagement had broken off a few years back and he was looking for a “nice Catholic girl” to date. Someone pointed to me as that “nice Catholic girl.”
Bob picked me up in his brand new 1966 blue Chevy pickup and our first date was spent visiting my dad who was in the hospital. Like many young people in 1966, I smoked, a habit picked up from my parents who also smoked. When I pulled a pack of cigarettes out of my purse, he frowned and said, “you don’t smoke, do you?”
“Nope,” I replied and shoved that pack back down. After that first date, and a second luncheon date the next day, I never smoked again (and never missed it!). Funny what love will enable you to do that you couldn’t do before.
Funny how falling more and more in love with Jesus will do the same. When we talk about dying to self or crucifying the flesh it sounds so impossible and restrictive. What will ever overcome our self-effort, self-centeredness, selfishness, or self-preoccupation? There certainly isn’t enough willpower in me to do that – I can barely resist a cookie! But loving someone and wanting to please them makes it so much easier and freeing. Loving God sets us free from self with great delight and joy.
As for Bob and me, in a few weeks it will be 52 years. Has it always been relaxed, heavens no! You can’t put two strong, stubborn people in the same house and expect it to always be smooth. But we share three children and three beautiful grandsons. And to date, more than five decades of memories.
