Thoughts of a Sojourner

In my last writing, I shared the beginning of mine and Kim’s love story and ended it with our first date. Kim used to laugh and actuallyy laughed throughout our marriage about the fact that I was a such a creature of habit. Those that know me best, know that I am still a creature of habit. One of the habits that I had was every Thursday night for about the first month that we dated, I would always call on Thursday night and asked her out for that Saturday night! I did this for about a month until we decided that we were officially “going steady”…lol. Today, I think most young people would say, “Facebook Official” instead of going steady. Unless there was a basketball game on Saturday evening that she had to cheer at, we had a standing date every Saturday the entirety of our senior year. During that basketball season, I logged a lot of miles with her and her parents to many basketball games. Our dates were usually pretty simple stuff such as eating out, going to a movie, a Bama football game or going to my Uncle Malcolm and Aunt Lou Ann’s to play cards or spoons. By the way, I learned very quickly through those card games and playing spoons that my cute little red headed girlfriend had a competitive streak a mile wide! These simple dates turned into continuing enjoying simple dates and outings throughout our marriage (more on the simple, yet important things in our marriage in a later writing). When I think about our Friday and Saturday night dates, it always brings a smile to my face because no matter what we decided to do, we had fun just enjoying being together. We learned through our 5 years of courtship to enjoy new things and learned to enjoy doing things that maybe one of us enjoyed and the other not so much, but through all these new adventures we learned that part of loving one another was doing things that maybe the other enjoyed a little more. Ours was a relationship that never endured a break up, long term or short term. Does that mean we never disagreed or even had a “lover’s quarrel”? Of course not! One thing though that we did not do once we began our serious courtship, which began around a month after that first date, was to end a night mad or not speaking to one another and this carried us well through 34 years, 6 months and 4 days of marriage. We both knew, as we would talk about through the years, that very early on in our courtship we would spend the rest of our natural lives together. In late July, 1989, I decided after four years of dating the only girl I had ever loved that it was time to pop the question. We had started to discuss more and more the rest of our lives together. The crazy thing is that we had no trepidation about the prospect of marriage. It just seemed like the natural next step for us and we knew that we were meant to spend the rest of our lives together as husband and wife. I remember like it was yesterday the several trips to various jewelry stores to look at engagement rings. We didn’t do this so she could pick out the specific one she wanted, but I asked her to just give me some ideas of what she would like – after all this would be something she would wear the rest of her life! I remember after seeing a lot of options, I picked out what I thought was the perfect token of my love and desire to make her my wife. As it should be, I went and sat down with her father Billy and asked for his only daughter’s hand in marriage. He gave his blessing and on August 17, 1989 I got down on one knee and asked Kimberly Michelle Jones to marry me and make me the happiest man on earth. Of course, she said YES and she loved the ring! Unlike, many of today’s proposals, ours was a simple moment of just Kim and me by ourselves. We believed moments like this should be shared between each other. Looking back, it was one of the sweetest moments in our 39 years together. It was a moment that would cast us off into 34 years of what I believe to be, in my humble and of course biased opinion, the greatest love story and adventure ever. We were married on August 17, 1990 a year to the day of our engagement and 5 years to the day of our first date at First Baptist Church in Athens, AL.. As a minister of nearly 26 years, I have seen a lot of brides, but I have never seen one as pretty as the one I saw when those doors swung open at the end of the aisle that evening. I had dated this woman for 5 years and yet in that moment my knees got weak at just the mere site of my beautiful bride as her and her dad begin to walk down that aisle toward me. Dr Fred Lackey performed the ceremony and with every word that we repeated from our vows that we actually wrote ourselves my heart seemed to beat faster as did her’s (according to her own words). My heart did not beat faster out of nervousness, but rather because I knew in a matter of moments we would share the most important kiss of our relationship. A kiss that would symbolize a 34 year adventure of a wonderful marriage. Our five years of courtship consisted of so many wonderful memories and that I suppose and pray will forever be locked in my memory. I will share over the next few weeks about our marriage. As I have said before, I pray that maybe these writings will be an encouragement to some, bring a smile to those that know us best, give a written record for our girls and the generations that follow and just give a glimpse into what I believe to be a wonderful story of love, overcoming, endurance, simplicity and fun.