DebSue is 52

Yes, hard to believe but my wonderful wife turned 52 years old this past week.  Since we have been married nearly 27 years, she has been married to me more than half of her (and mine) life.  Poor girl!  She has aged quite gracefully and writes her own blog, which is very well followed.  You can find it here.  She also writes a daily haiku called "Elixir of Life" which is a daily quip about coffee.  She can follow her on Twitter.  Deb is a professional photographer and quite a good one if I do say so myself.  Her gift is the ability to find things that many of us can't find, especially tunnel vision males like her husband.  She does not enjoy portraits or posing type pictures.  She can find the shots that would not be obvious to other people.  Enough of the shameless promotion.

I think Internet dating services like eharmony.com and match.com are ok.  I know people who use them and are satisfied with the results.  However, I am concerned that for the Christian they may be steering us down the wrong path.  Because these services focus on the person more like us or more like we envision we want our partner to be.  This is risky.  I know for a fact I would not have picked out Deb based on our similarities.  We have more differences than similarities from this perspective.  However, if each of us is the same, probably one of us is unnecessary.  I would not be nearly the person I am were it not for the appreciation of things I gained from my wife. She has insight, interests, and abilities that I could never have. For example, her love of history, art, and some could argue useless facts.  She is amazing on Jeopardy and I have encouraged her to try and enter. As a team on Jeopardy, we could do well because I would get sports and business and she would get everything else.  Like the guy who said he teamed with Michael Jordon to score 40 points in the game (Jordan scored 36).  She is incredibly free-form, creative, and even goofy which balances my linear, tunnel vision approach.  Two of our daughters have this creative ability and one is more like me in her no-nonsense approach.


Now if she was like me, God would not have enabled me to grow like I have.  I have a much deeper appreciation for the things she brings to the table.  That is truly a God thing.  One plus one equals three.  We do marital mentoring for young couples and we encourage them to look beyond and appreciate the things their mate is and does.  We made the mistake early in our marriage of trying to change the other person to be like the other.  It does not work.  Instead after much torture, we both prayed that God would change us to be transformed so that our marriage would honor Him.  And it did.  And God threw the enjoyment in for good measure.  While we loved having children, we are now in the early phases of being empty-nesters and so far it has been a blast.  I am a better person because of Deb and hopefully she would say the same.  And the best is yet to come!