Today is my beautiful wife’s birthday. It is also the day we celebrate becoming a couple. We met near the end of the summer of 1988 right after I graduated from high school. We were both working at Pizza Inn and we spent a lot of time just hanging out and became really good friends. I won’t lie and I’m not exaggerating when I say it was “love at first sight” for me. There was something about her that captivated me. She was also fun to be around. She started her last year of high school and I left Pizza Inn but she was always on my mind. Deep in my heart I truly believed we would somehow be together in spite of the fact that we both dated other people over that next year.
There was a time when I could have filled in all the details about all the stuff that took place between November 1988 and August 1989. There used to be journals where I wrote a lot of it down but they were lost in a move years ago. Honestly, I am glad they are no longer around. I don’t remember much about that time. I do know I was in a very weird place mentally and I drank a lot. Most of my memories are a blur and I’m okay with that. I do remember reconnecting with Robin not long after she graduated and just like that our relationship picked up where it left off.
We say that her birthday is the day we officially became a couple but we aren’t 100% sure. We did start “dating” the weekend of her birthday but as I look at a 1989 calendar I see that her birthday was on a Sunday. My memory (and I confess it isn’t as sharp as it once was) tells me that it was either a Friday or Saturday night. Truthfully, I no longer remember. What I do know is that after that weekend we were together and have been ever since. There were some ups and downs along the way but we both stuck it out. We celebrated 30 years of marriage this past June and as this weekend rolls around we have now been a couple for 32 years.
Happy birthday my love. If God allows it, I look forward to the next 30 years.
That 80s Pastor Dude 