Happy Anniversary To My Wife

Today, Jan and I celebrate our 43^rd anniversary. I want to take a moment to honor a most amazing woman. In fact, this is my anniversary card to her. It is just a little after 4:00 a.m. here in southern Oregon. I am letting Jan sleep in a little more before a day of celebration begins with a special breakfast.

I first met Jan when she was 19 and I was 20. It was a “chance” meeting while walking across the campus of what was then known as Multnomah School of the Bible. Now it is called Multnomah University. That first meeting was 46 years ago. To this day when I see her at a distance my heart still does a crazy little “flip”. Its like I am still falling in love with her all over again every day.

Jan was raised in Central America, the daughter of missionaries. She traveled through the nations in that part of the world on the back of donkeys, in four-wheel drive Jeeps fording swollen rivers and was flown to school in a missionary’s airplane from a jungle airstrip. She is adventurous. There have been times when I had chickened out on something when she would say, “Come on. Let’s try it!” She has never complained about anything in all our years together because she learned early on how to be happy with a little.

Jan has taught me about intimacy with God. That intimacy has produced something profound in our relationship. There is nothing I cannot tell her. I have confessed my sins to her with a red face and broken heart. I have never once been rejected. In fact, early on as we learned to love each other this way she said, “Now, I can really trust you.” Amazing! I cannot imagine a marriage without complete and utter honestly with your spouse. I have been given a gift.

After all these years, I really don’t know where I end and she begins. This is the miracle of becoming one. Neither of us lost our uniqueness as a man and woman as God took us deeper into a relationship of oneness. In fact, I found myself as a man in the process. Something very special happens in a marriage that can only take place in a relationship of one man and one woman committed to each other in marriage. It is an ongoing miracle.

Happy Anniversary, Sweetheart! I could have written page after page and found no end to what is amazing about you. The world, at least my little part of it, is reading your anniversary card. I wanted the world to know what I have been telling you for all our years together. You are a wonderful friend, wife and co-laborer in the fields of God. I love you without end.