As Close As You Can Get

As Close as You Can Get

God places the lonely in families.

Psalm 68:6

The last time we counted, my parents had moved forty-seven times. One of our family jokes through the years was to try to guess where we would be living the next year at the same time.

I have always admired my mom for showing enormous patience, endurance, and good humor through all those moves. She used to laughingly say that if our television accidentally got unplugged, it would run onto the front porch and wait to be loaded. Or if someone even mentioned the word move in our house, the furniture immediately piled itself up in the corner.

During one of those moves, the van transporting our household goods and lifelong treasures flipped over and burned. For years after that Mom would miss a kitchen utensil or some other item and say, “I guess we lost that in the fire.” But even that she bore with grace and smiles.

On November 20, 1996, we celebrated my parents’ sixtieth wedding anniversary. We had a nice luncheon at a restaurant with immediate family and a few close friends. It was a joyous occasion.

At one point I asked my mom and dad to tell us to what they attributed their long, happy marriage. Dad said, “Well, I know there’s no such thing as a perfect wife, but your mother is as close as any woman could ever hope to get. She’s followed me around all over the country and never complained. She’s done everything a wife and mother is supposed to do and a lot more. She is the reason we have had a long, happy marriage.”

The admiration my dad had for Mom was sincere and deep, and their marriage lasted yet another ten years before Dad went home to heaven. Mother obviously felt the same way about him. They had a mutual-admiration society of two, based on their individual and joint relationships with God.

Father, thank you for the joy of family laughter and love. I praise you for putting us in families for support and comfort. Amen.