Somewhere down the road

The words began to flow like rain from this dark, dark sky. Someone named Bildad responded to someone named Job in something called the Bible.

"But if you pray to God and seek the favor of the Almighty, and if you are pure and live with integrity, he will surely rise up and restore your happy home. And though you started with little, you will end with much."

The notion is presented that if you are pure, a quaint notion at that, you will be given in return by God himself.

First, I haven't been pure.
Second, I don't think much of the notion that God returns in kind.

Thirty years ago this week, I was the News Editor of the Jackson Daily News. Believe it or not, I was involved in news, not sports. I had come back from 10 incredibly long months away in what the Bible apply describes as "the far country." I had taken a position I knew next to nothing about (news) so that I could get out of "there" wherever "there" was (which happened to be as executive sports editor of two newspapers in Reno, Nev.).

When I returned to Jackson, Miss., I had met the most wonderful and beautiful and thoughtful and memorable woman who worked at the Daily News, as well. Working together had led to being together, and with this ring I promised.

Life changed because life changes. The future changed because we finally figured out we needed each other more than we needed things we didn't have or want.

We fell in love like we were kids, which looking back I most certainly was. We treasured each day's look into each other's eyes. Thirty years ago Sunday, I worked, finished the morning's newspaper edition, then we were married for that day and the rest of our lives.

Thirty years. Thirty years like it was mere minutes.

We've had children who grew in becoming parents. We've had homes we've purchased and homes we've lost and hurricanes that changed everything and life morphed. We've lived so long there have been two different movie series with origin stories of Spider-Man. We've lived together so long we've seen two entirely different casts for Battlestar Galactica, and two different casts for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and two0 casts for Daredevil and on and on.

While everything around us has been rebooted, Mary and I continue on.

When all is said and done, however, it was the looks into each other's eyes each day that have been the most important moments. Each morning has been a portal into a depth of love that has been impossible to explain.

And here we are.

Headed somewhere down the road, like Amy Grant sang.

"Somewhere down the road
There'll be answers to the questions
And somewhere down the road
tho' we cannot see it now

Somewhere down the road
You will find mighty arms reaching for you
And they will hold the answers
somewhere down the road."

Job said, "For we were born but yesterday and know nothing. Our days on earth are as fleeing as a shadow. But those who came before us will teach you. they will teach you the wisdom of old."

Look, I'm very aware that I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed. I've more than a bit aware that I've made a gazillion mistakes over the years. But the decision 30 years ago to marry my sweet, wonderful Mary was not one of those errors in judgment. Far, far from it. 

She is my breath, my blood, my life and my love, and it was not just human love she brought me, as powerful and important as that has been. 

She brought me sheepishly to Jesus when most everyone around me was absolutely sure I was beyond saving. She was the one who taught the unteachable, reached the unreachable, loved the unlovable. She was the living preserver tossed into a raging sea to the one going under for the final time.

She is the brighter day on the darkest of nights.

Somewhere down this dark night,  she reached for me with one hand while straining the other for Jesus.

Securing his hand, life not only changed, it was reclaimed, remade, reborn.

She paved the way for me to understand then accept this wonderful Savior named Jesus. Somewhere down the road.

Job finishes chapter 8 by saying, "He will once again fill your mouth with laughter and your lips with shouts of joy..." somewhere down the road.

Seems about right. When the bottom had completely fallen out, 30 years ago, God brought the very literal answer to the most pervasive prayer of my life, somewhere down the road. 

Arms reached out, love extended its hands, a smile with the strength of a grizzly opened itself to me somewhere down the road

And life changed eternally somewhere down the long, long road.