Saturday, June 18, 2016

to have & to hold ... 50 year tribute!

June 18, 2016

Dearest Mom & Dad,
What an honor to have 50 great years of marriage with one another!  I am so proud of you!I have been blessed to experience 47 of those years.  I loved discovering your wedding day pictures.  Peering into those bright young faces ready to start this new adventure called marriage, I can’t help but think you made young love so beautiful.  Memories like photos come to mind.  It is varied with downs, sideways, & ups — all cherished & loved.
There are those leaking tents, laundry mat trips, compliments of well behaved kids, going to church, having a missionary in our home, making a Navaho hogan from popsicle sticks & ‘mud’, frozen pipes that burst, leaking trailer roof, skinned chins, skinned knees, broken arm, library trips, reading to & giving me the world of learning through books, family vacations, long car rides, bickering kids, all the wonderful cats & dogs we have adopted or in one case we were the ones adopted, teaching the art of riding a bike (bushes), afternoons at the pool, Dad’s flowers, pulling weeds in the garden, expecting a baby brother, buying a house (411 S Greene, our impossible dream - Jehovah Jireh), moving, teenage angst & silent sulking, band contests & trips, teaching the nuances of driving a car (bushes), leaving your child at college, gallbladder surgery, diverticulitis & surgery, support for buying house & being the movers, diabetes, not feeling good because of the heart value,  clean up after storm damage, & open heart surgery make a wonderful collage of memories that have made us a home.

There is a perfect picture in Psalms 1 of what your marriage has been for my brothers & me.  Your marriage is a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season & whose leaf does not wither.  One word — prosperous — for the Lord has watched over your marriage & home.  You have given us strong roots watered by the Living Waters of Salvation.  This is treasure stored in Heaven.  You have stood against the ways of the world & have instilled in us to love God & to enjoy Him forever.  This is the shade of soft breezes that you cast by standing tall & not withering under the heat.  The fruit of love, joy, peace, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, & self-control has been given in full abundance in your home.  You gave us boundaries, teaching us that the thou shall nots was for our protection & the thou shalls was blessings.  Thank you, Mom & Dad, because of 50 years of wedded covenant together now I can be a sheltering tree to those who come my way.  You make vintage love more beautiful than young love!

‘too amazing for me … the way of a man with a woman’  proverb 30:18-19

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