True confession. Today is the 40^th anniversary of our wedding. At this time 40 years ago I was awake and excited about getting married. I was nervous, but strangely I think I was more nervous about putting my Tux on than I was about committing to someone for a lifetime. You see I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know what I was doing with a Tux or a marriage. (More on that in another post.)

Over the next few days I am going to give my wife some notes, cards and other things that will contain 40 reasons I love her. Shhhhh, don’t tell her this is going to happen, it is a surprise.

Here are 5 of the 40 …

–She is beautiful. In all honesty I noticed her because she was so pretty and she is more beautiful today than she was when I first met her. (Side note: I first met her while on a date with someone else. Don’t get upset the first time I called to ask her out I had to wait until she got in from a date with another guy.)

–She still laughs at my jokes. Even the ones no one else gets. I am pretty sure that she sometimes laughs just to make me feel good. But the fact that she still laughs after 40 years is pretty cool.

–She is my biggest cheerleader. (If you ask her she has a great cheerleader story to tell you. It is very inspirational and has become a family legend. A former staff member of mine still calls and asks her to repeat the story sometimes.)

–She is an awesome mother and mother-in-law. She loves our kids, and we consider our in-law kids our kids and she loves them the same. She has sacrificed much, more than our kids know, while our kids were still at home. Actually, she still does.

–She has been, and still is, my partner in ministry for the 32+ years that I have served. There have been times in my ministry that I was pretty sure some of the churches were happier she was with them than me.

There are many more and I will share them in the near future.

For today, I just want to say Happy Anniversary to the love of my life, to my partner in every sense of the word , to the one who has given me more than I will ever deserve.

Here’s to Jody, I love you.

Dennis