This post in honor of a great man, Wayne Lewis Craig (1945-1986)

[February 22, 2016...47th Anniversary Post - likely my last post about this time in my life]

It was such a good time....my last college year...the semester before, I met and fell in love with a tall, dark, handsome, senior who made me study in the library every night (best grade point  average of my entire college career!) and walked me home before the campus Cinderella pumpkin time.  It only took a couple of dates to know it was the real thing. 

Fast forward and this strong handsome athlete is holding my hand on his deathbed...a short 17 year journey enjoyed by both.  So, I was often asked why it was such a good marriage.  Why we made it so well though the several threats of death...times when I had to give him back to God, only to have him returned again...a little longer...time for making more love, hoping yet for babies, believing without doubt that he would be 'healed' and get up and walk on into our future with me.  To sum it up, the drug cyclorsporin that saved his new transplanted liver, simply killed him by way of a cancer specific to the overdose of the drug.  What was God thinking...a sidebar...not for this posting.

Following his death, I was often asked why the marriage was so good...how we faced the struggles, the pressures of so many people in our lives, walking through the last year, quite intimately with us...the newspaper and TV interviews...having faces recognized in public (this is forgotten quickly though).  How could we remain so 'normal' in the midst of such unusual times?  Of course only the closest friends saw the sobs and heard the doubts. 

We lived by faith and trust at that time. I'm sure I was the reason for any of the first aggravations in our marriage.  Being at that time a home economics major, he made the assumption that I knew how to 'keep house'...but I couldn't and I still can't.  I require maid service. It works better that way.  And I assummed  that he would make the money for our little married life.  It works best that way.  But he made little and there was always the stress of making ends meet.

So, over the years, he learned to do laundry and wash dishes and I learned to make more money - each of us filling in the gaps to make it all 'whole.'  We shared our faith and laid awake late at night talking of it often.  We learned, as his body failed due to Crohns Disease and liver disease, to talk frankly about our feelings.  I learned to say, "What if you die...what will I do?"  He learned to talk about it in humor, as that helped him.  He requested, 'I hope you won't date until you leave the cemetery."  He set me free, urging me to move on, remarry, have a future to enjoy.  I cried.

But to answer the question of what made it so good, and in the midst of ongoing, 17 years of serious health problems...well it is quite simple...REALLY SIMPLE, and here it is:

We were just a young couple who loved each other, beyond words to describe; knew how to say 'forgive me' and 'you're forgiven;' and understood how to take the 'parts' of us and make a 'whole.' Our mariage was perfect because, we-so imperfect - were perfected in Jesus.

The crowning glory of our marriage was that we loved our Lord more than we loved each other.  That's it...all of it. 

5"But watch thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry. 6For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. 7I have fought a good fight, I have finished [my] course, I have kept the faith: 8Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing....." 

                                                                                              2 Timothy 4:5f