16 Years of Marriage

It is hard to believe that on May 13, 2006 we have been married for over 16 years.  My, oh my how the time has just flown.  Someone once said that the older you get the faster time moves.  This soul must have been an ancient old soul because it seems that the older I get the FASTER time does move.  

In the month of May we have two birthdays.  Justin recently turned 11 and Kristina recently turned 14.  There are times that I wonder if the children will ever make it to their next birthday OR if I will live through the experience myself.  It seems that the older Kristina gets the more she wants to spread her wings.  I am thinking back to my childhood and I am wondering if I ever had a sleep over.  I am thinking that perhaps when my parents were stationed in Leesville Louisiana and my dad was a drill instructor on the army base at Ft Polk that my friend Jack and I must have done that.  Having a sleep over at someone else’s house is apparently a very HOT item for a pre teen.  When I think about it I am thinking, “How exciting can it be to listen to some stranger snore in your bedroom”?  I would imagine that sleeping has nothing to do with it.  The fact that your friend has been allowed to come spend the night or you have been given permission to spend the night at your friends house has some magical quality that only a child can appreciate.  Katy told me that my princess (Kristina) planned a slumber party in honor of my trip to Denver.  Apparently 9 girls descended upon Katy while I was gone.  Katy told me that she was afraid to go to sleep.  Is there something wrong with that picture folks?  Can you imagine how dangerous it could be to have 9 adolescents living with you under the same roof for an extended period of time?  Katy told me that one of the fun things that the girls found to do was to see how many times they could light our candles.   I looked at Katy and said, you mean to tell me that while I was gone 9 girls were in the living room playing with fire?  Do we even have a fire extinguisher?

I almost forgot about the high light of the slumber party.  The girls LOVE the telephone and were up all hours of the night using our home phone to talk to all of their friends at an UNGODLY hour.  Just how much does a teenager have to say to another teenager anyway?  I am sitting here just imagining what the NSA lackie must have been doing as they were trying to keep up with the yickety yack that was going non stop at our house on the phone lines that night.  I would imagine that they had to change the tapes on the main frames at least once to keep up with it all.  I wonder how many times this pour soul went to sleep while trying to make sense out of what was being said.  LOL…  

I guess no one ever said that raising children and holding together a relationship was ever going to be easy.  It never has and it never will.  Being married and a parent are challenges that require stamina and courage.  Do I hear an amen??  LOL… Every Saturday morning I go to breakfast with my friend Chuck and some of the other men from church.   I told Chuck that I am a very lucky and blessed man to be married to such a wonderful lady as my gizmo.  Gizmo (aka Katy or Georgia Kathryn Moffitt) stole my heart 16 years ago and refuses to give it back to me.  Katy and I both attended First Baptist Church in Houston Texas back in 1989 and 1990.  We were both part of the singles group at that church and we spent some time together after church eating out with the other singles and attending singles events.  At that time in my life I had no desire to find a mate as I had been working out the kinks from a previous marriage that did not work out.  I will never forget one of my friends at church who I considered one of my spiritual sisters coming up to me and telling me that I was very difficult to be around sometimes because of the issues I was having to work through.  I know that this is probably hard for most of you to imagine this but one of my friends at church was telling me what a jerk I could be.  I just could not believe that she was saying that to innocent me.

Katy and I met at a Mash party where the singles would dress up as one of the MASH characters from the TV show and participate in whatever type of events that they were having at church that night.  On the particular night that Katy and I met I was playing volleyball out on the basketball court and keeping a watchful eye on my son Jeremy who was still 3 years old.  Katy just happened to be on the sidelines near Jeremy and was helping keep an eye on him while I played volleyball.  I managed to wander off the court and check out this single female that was getting a little too close to my son.   Over the span of 6 months to a year Katy and I managed to keep running into each other when we would all go out to eat after church.  I did not know this until later but Katy and her friend Peggy kept reserving a seat for me next to Katy when we would go out to eat with the singles.  Can you imagine that they were plotting on me??  I tell ya, it is just not safe for a guy to go stuff his face anymore.  Hahahahahaha  Anyway, one thing led to another and the next thing I know I am head over heals in love with gizmo.  Really, I just wanted to be friends.  As I had mentioned earlier in this diatribe I had as much use for women at this point in my life as I did for a pile of dog doo doo.  I was still pretty messed up from another relationship therefore the last thing I wanted to do was to get involved with someone else any time soon.  I remember the day that I took Katy aside after Sunday night service and told her that while I liked her very much that I just wanted to be friends and that I thought that things were progressing a little bit too fast for my liking.  Katy was just crushed and cried and cried as if I had broken her heart.  Poor dear…  Why did she and does she love me so??  LOL…  Anyway, the friend’s thing continued for quite some time.  I had Jeremy every two weeks and one weekend on a Friday night I remember that Katy called the house I was staying at and invited Jeremy and I to  go to Galveston.  Katy used Jeremy to get back into my life.  Can you imagine that.  Poor Jeremy at a tender young age of 3 was being manipulated by this man hungry single from First Baptist Church.  LOL…  Well, we went to Galveston that evening and rode the ferry across.  Before you know it Jeremy is in the back of my 1973 two door Mercury Montego and Katy and I were on the beach talking into the wee hours of the morning.  I guess that you could say that the fires of friendship were rekindled into something a tad bit more serious.  

Katy and I both have an understanding.  We agreed to the fact that we are married with a coffin clause.  Some folks get married and have a prenuptial agreement to sign.  Katy and I just had a one line coffin clause that basically says that you can get out of the relationship IF you are dead and they are putting your carcass into a pine box and banging nails into it.  You could say that we made a very solemn commitment to one another to make this relationship work for better or for worse.  We also understood that she was not marrying me because of my money nor was I marrying her for her cooking skills.  As a matter of fact Katy and I both had more people telling us how our marriage would fail vs. saying that it would be a success.  Imagine our shock at listening to our Christian friends tell us that there was no way that our marriage could ever last because of things in our past.  Looking back over the last 16 years I have to say that I never fully realized what kind of a true gem that God had placed into my life.  When you first get married there is a certain physical attraction that gets the flames started and then the children come and the careers take over and the next thing you know the raging flames of romance start to die out and then you are in the midst of the commitment that you have made to your spouse.  On September 11th 1990 our first child, Jessica Ann was born and she was 3.5 months premature.  We spent the first three months of Jessica’s life watching her fight for life but with much prayer and great medical treatments she was free to come home to be with her parents.  

One of the things that I treasure the most about our relationship as husband and wife is that we are totally sold out to one another and our family.  I can honestly say that we have been through a LOT of things that most women and marriages would have NEVER  held up to.  I honestly believe that if things had gotten so bad that we would have wound up on the street that Katy and the kids would have been right there beside me.  No, we never wound up in the street however things did get pretty rough for us financially on more than one occasion.  We have weathered the storms of financial disaster, medical emergencies with our children and many other storms that we have faced together.  Thanks to our undying commitment to one another and our individual and joint commitment to our faith in Jesus Christ we have managed to stay together despite the odds.  

As of 2006 Katy cooks better and I have managed to increase my salary somewhat.  One of the things that money can not purchase and that is worth more than all the gold in the world is the peace that passes all understanding.  When you walk into our home you will find that it is a very peaceful place.  Does that mean that Katy and I sweep everything under the rug and we live in denial or think that either of us is without fault?  Of course not, we are married and we do have our moments when we disagree on things.  As a matter of fact we have agreed that we need to have at least one fight every other year just so that we can remember how to do it.  We also agreed that kissing and making up at the end is also just as fun today as it was way back when.  LOL….

Thank you for 16 years of wonderful marriage my gizmo.  I am looking forward to another 16 years with you and I can not wait to see how much our love for one another is going to grow and mature.  Thank you for putting up with me during my moments of selfishness and immaturity.  Thank you for being there for me despite my not deserving it.  Thank you for the Jesus in you that I have seen over the last 16 years as you have shown me how to be a selfless servant to your family.   Thank you for the quiet courage and strength that you have given to our marriage and to each of our situations that we have walked through.  Thank you for being my bride and the mother of my wonderful children.  Thank you for accepting my son Jeremy as your own and loving him no less than your own children.  Thank you so much for your never ending love.  
I wuv you vewy vewy mooch gizmo, don’t ever forget it.  Hugs