WHO'D HAVE THOUGHT

The world wide web is filled with millions of commentaries and thoughts about marriage. But, truly, the loudest comment on marriage is longevity, so I think I have a right to make a few comments since I've been married forty years today. I fell in love with Tom the minute I saw him peek through my living room window as he rang my doorbell for the first time forty years ago. I'm not so sure that it was so much that I loved him; it was that he loved me, treated me as if I were the most important person in the world from our first meeting. I was 28 years old, and I hadn't had any man take me seriously, so I was in love with love!! Our first date was attendance at a BYU educational seminar in Tacoma, followed by a walk through Point Defiance Park in Tacoma, a movie, and root beer floats while we sat in Doug's T-bird convertible. We didn't discuss marriage; I don't even know what we discussed, but neither of us can remember the movie we saw. When he'd gone home, I called my best friend to share details and my conviction that we'd marry even though he hadn't asked. The next day, my "best" friend met Tom in the hallway of the church. I wasn't there. Knowing my comments on marriage were merely fantasies, she said, sweetly, "I understand congratulations are in order." Ugh...Tom, taken aback, thought to himself, "If it is within my power, I will never let another person hurt Julie again." And, he never has!!
I was lectured by friends at first; he had lots of strikes against him:

1. He was "older." 32 to be exact.

2. He'd been married before. To a strikingly beautiful woman

3. He had a son. An eight year old living with his mom in Texas.

4. He was broke. Boy was he broke!!

5. He was inactive in the church. He was working three jobs at the time but quit one so he could teach a Sunday School class.

I didn't care about any of that!! I was in love. I drove my mom and sister absolutely crazy with frequent phone calls extolling the virtues of this wonderful man. We met in March and were married in June. 40 years ago in the Idaho Falls temple of the Mormon Church.

I am still in love with love, and, coincidentally with this fine, upright, good man who

works every day to make sure that I will not be hurt. We're best friends, bosom buddies, soul mates...all the cliches in the book. We're so accustomed to each other that we complete one another's sentences, and, more than not, assume that what we like or think is what he/she likes or thinks. Here's to another forty years and on into eternity.