7 Paths Blog

1st published 2/14/08

On Valentine’s Day 1974 I gave Sarah her first Valentine from me. Three months and four days later we married. On our wedding day I could not believe how lucky I was. (For my religious readers, you can translate that as “how blessed I was”.) She was beautiful. We could talk for hours. She loved me and I loved her. I could hardly wait for our wedding night.

Now that we’ve been married for almost 34 years and I’ve discovered Sarah is a lot more than beautiful. She has talents that I was oblivious to in the passion leading up to our wedding.

She’s an organizational genius. She kept our family and home organized while we were raising our three children. She still keeps our home organized. I’m amazed and blessed by her organizational skills because when the Creator handed me my skill set, he overlooked keeping track of details.

She’s a great confidante. As someone who was placed in leadership positions beginning shortly after we were married I benefitted from having someone I could talk over the dreams and craziness that are a part of leadership. The conversation never ends.

She laughs at my foibles. When you marry, it’s like you marry a mirror. You get reflections on strengths and weaknesses you never knew you had. Especially the weaknesses. The mirror of marriage can magnify your weaknesses or reflect them kindly. Sarah overlooks my weaknesses sometimes and reflects my weaknesses with warm laughter at other times. What a talent she has for loving me.

She’s a great editor. In the 1993 I finished the first draft of a long dreamed of novel, Jonas and Sally. When I gave it to Sarah to read for the first time I suggested she mark it up where she thought it needed to be improved. Boy, did she mark it up. I was blue for a week. Then I began rewriting and discovered that she was a brilliant editor. Shortly after the rewrite it was accepted for publication and the editor at the publishing company had little work to do because Sarah had worked her editorial magic. She still edits most of my writing.

Thirty-four years later I still can’t believe how blessed I am to be married to Sarah. And she’s still beautiful in the light of day and in the sweet, dark of night.