Miss Goody Two Shoes and Party Boy-30 years later

I never should have been in the bar that night. It was like going into the grocery store when you haven’t eaten all day.

Everything looks way better than it really is, and you gravitate towards the stuff that isn’t very good for you.

And so it was the night I met my husband.

It wasn’t love at first sight.

To the contrary, Keith’s roommate Kevin had accompanied him that August evening, and I started dating him.

Well, we dated until he grew bored with me and moved on to greener pastures.

I was unaware Keith had been biding his time for just that, patiently waiting to ask me out.

Halloween, 1980, was our first date. (The picture above is from the following year.)

We may have been the only couple not in costume, but it didn’t matter—we were on a different planet anyway.

I had never felt a fit like I experienced with Keith as we chatted, laughed and danced the night away.

From that point forward we were practically inseparable, and as of today, February 26, 2013, we have been married thirty years.

Who knew I could love someone so deeply and without reservation, and who would love me back for who I was?

I had cried and railed for years for such a man.

Why can’t I find a guy to love me for me? Why can’t any of them see the me inside? Why do men have to be so stupid and only look at the outside, and pick a woman based on that? (Not that I was sensitive about being almost fifty pounds overweight. . .)

Nonetheless, I kissed many frogs, but the magic never happened.

Until that first date with my future hubby.

As I look back on our marriage, I now see how God had answered my prayers when the time was right. While I thought it was always no, it was just not yet.

As I wrote previously:

We joke about how we would have not given each other the time of day in high school if we knew each other then because he was a party boy and I was a goody-two shoes girl.

However, by the time we met a few years later we saw something more in each other, even though all my family saw was one more young man destined to quickly exit through the fast revolving door of my love life, this one just a little different from the rest, being dressed in leather covered jeans, sporting a pierced ear, driving a purple Jeep and  owning a Harley.

Yet, here we are, and I love that he loves me for the real work in process me, that he is willing to converse and listen, that he is a great dad and a friend to our daughters, that his sense of humor has kept me laughing for years, that he saw and sees in me what I sometimes don’t see in myself, that he encourages me to grow into my best self, and that he is my absolute best friend forever.

I know marriages are never perfect.

However, I have been blessed to be part of a large, stable and happy family with parents who have been married over fifty years, and Keith’s parents were married for forty-five prior to his dad’s passing away.

One of my God-sized dreams for Keith and I is that we, too, will continue to grow in our relationship, and be role models for our daughters and others in our lives, just as my parents and his have been role models for us.

Happy Anniversary, Keith, my best friend and confidant, my partner, encourager and supporter, the calm to my storms, the love of my life!

What are your God-sized dreams for your relationships?

Sharing at NOBH, Finding Heaven, Holley Gerth, Happy Wives Club

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