The witness in the sky is faithful

Last week my husband and I were married 48 years — which doesn’t make us as old as it sounds. We married young at 19 and 20. Our simple country wedding was on a beautiful autumn afternoon in the little A-frame church on Kalispell Bay at Priest Lake.

I remember the sun shining in the side windows behind me, warming my shoulder as I knelt at the altar — like God’s hand of blessing. Our wedding song, “We’ve Only Just Begun,” was all about starting out — “Before the risin’ sun we fly So many roads to choose We’ll start out walkin’ and learn to run …”

This year on the day before our anniversary I woke early in the morning, raising the pleated shade so the full moon could shine in the window. I lay on the bed in the moonlight thinking over the years of our marriage. Places we’d lived. Adventures we’d had. Raising our four children — and now their children, 20 grands, in our family.

I thought, too, about hard things we’d overcome. Relationally — even separating for a year. Financially — the time the banker told us, “Face it — you’re broke.” The loss of our parents. And in this last five years Terry’s surgeries one after another to help him stay upright.

We had learned to run all right — but now it was getting back to walking. And for Terry that meant a pair of Canadian crutches — he calls them “sticks”—to keep him balanced. Our slowing down years were upon us.

Somewhere in all this pondering I looked at the bright moon and its light shining on us. And I remembered the sunshine on my shoulder on our wedding day. That feeling of being touched by God. Now all these years later here was the light of the moon. An assurance that God continues with us — has always been with us. That the time left us holds beauty and serenity.

The Bible speaks of sun and moon saying, “The witness in the sky is faithful.” It took 48 years — but I connected those dots.