Doing Life Together

 Doing Life Together

 

This week my oldest daughter and her sweet husband celebrate twenty-six years of marriage. They are a good team. Good to each other and good parents. 

 

Allison and David are good at “doing life together.”

 

April 14th marks the one year-anniversary of my marriage to Mike. It is  a wonderful and unexpected adventure for this time of life. 

 

Our Wedding Day with Allison, David 
& Grandsons Joshua and Spencer

Both Mike and I had good previous marriages. Both of us were widowed. He at a young age. And me? Well…not so young. His wife, Betty, died of cancer in 1987 and my husband, Tom, died in 2014 from injuries incurred in a bicycle accident. 

 

Though Mike and I have known each other since ninth grade, we never dated until catching up via our high school class reunion in 2022. 

 

I have a few readers who have watched my journey as a wife, mother, grandmother, teacher, professor, author, widow, missionary, and now a wife again. 

Mike and I were talking about my blog over lunch one day. As we talked, I decided I would to recap our first year of marriage here. 

 

Why? To bring us to the important stuff...

 

Mike and I were married atop a hill in Fairfield, Ohio. (We served pizza and cupcakes for the reception, but that’s just how we roll.)

We moved into our new house. It’s good to have a place we can call our own. Then…we remodeled our new house so we could truly call it “Our Own.”

 

Since tying the knot we’ve celebrated our own birthdays and those of our family members. We enjoyed our first Thanksgiving and our first Christmas together. 

 

But what makes our life special isn’t where we live or the celebrations marked on a calendar. 

 

What makes our relationship of value is… quite simply… Doing Life Together.

 

*It’s watching old westerns on television. Or cheering for our favorite sports team together. 

 

*It’s Mike waking me up early one morning saying, “Becky, you’ve gotta come see this! There’s an owl on the dock. Just sitting there.”

 

*It’s Cowboy Church on Sunday and hamburgers on Friday night. And knowing Tuesday is laundry day.

 

*And like today, it’s sitting on the back porch and he looks at me and says, “How about we jump in the car and go to the Cove for lunch.” 

 

*Of course it is also me breaking my eyeglasses and Mike driving me all over to find someplace to get new ones. 

*It’s going to the doctor for our annual check-ups. 

*It’s cooking something new and delicious, going out to eat, or merely reheating leftovers. 

 

Who is it you “do life” with? A spouse? Family? Friends?  Perhaps your neighbors or “church family?”

 

Doing life together is about:

Sharing the past, 

Living in the now, 

and 

Planning a future. 

     And it is good. 

Take a moment to recapture those moments. It is good to think back on the memories you create with those you love.  And be sure to include the "day-to-day" because that's where we find true joy in "doing life together."