20 Years Ago Today...

... my dear husband Steve and I were married in a little church in Ketchikan, Alaska. It's been an amazing and wonderful marriage full of ups and downs and adventures. And knowing all I know now I'd do it all over again in a heartbeat! After 20 years we are still VERY much in love and still looking forward to living the rest of our lives together. :)
It's really funny tho. The year that I met Steve was 1989. It was a HORRIBLE year. I remember sitting in my fav bar with one of my girlfriends saying "The only good thing that happened this year was that I met Steve." At the time, we were only dating. He had given me a very nice opal heart necklace and a modern day language Bible for Christmas just before he left with his 3 sons to visit his brother who was stationed in Hawaii at the time. I was beginning to realize that I was falling in love with Steve when he called me all the way from Hawaii on Christmas Day! Now remember, at the time you paid for every second of a long distance call you made back then! So this was not a cheap call! We didn't talk long of course, but the fact that he took the time and spent the money meant a lot to me! :) I'd never had a man do that for me before!
We actually met because God put us together. Two men (Steve's dad Charlie and a man named Jim Byrne) 20 years before had become friends through work at the US Forestry Service in Kentucky... Charlie had 4 sons and took a promotion and moved to Alaska thinking he'd only stay a couple of years and then come back to the states. He never left! Meanwhile, Jim had 4 sons as well and moved up the administrative ladder ending up in the Washington, DC area. Charlie and Jim kept in contact through the years and the sons met each other through a vacation or two. Jim bought a farm to retire on about an hour's drive from DC thinking that would be a good investment. THEN he found out that if he didn't keep cattle on that farm the taxes would be exorbitant. Also meanwhile the boys all grew up and Steve married and had 3 sons. When Steve's wife left him, remarried and moved the boys to Virginia, Steve went into commercial salmon fishing. That left his winters free to come down and visit his sons. But he needed a place to stay. So Jim and his wife said "You can stay with us free room and board if you go feed and take care of the cows twice a week." A deal was struck and the second winter Steve came down is when we actually met.
One of Jim's sons was a bouncer at the Peppermint Lounge where my girlfriends and I hung out. Chris told me one night about his Alaskan fisherman friend who would be coming in and asked if my friends and I could keep him company as Chris had to work that night. We always did stuff like that and thought nothing of it. That is until I walked down the stairs into the entryway of the club that night! I'm picturing some big, burly, bearded man as an Alaskan fisherman. But this guy talking to Chris was CUTE! Turns out it was Steve! We had a fun evening, went out on a few dates and the rest is history! That was October 1989. By February Steve had bought me tickets to come back to Ketchikan with him and see if I liked it. The sun came out and I fell in love! No talk about marriage or anything so I wasn't expecting the ring on my last night there! But of course I said yes! I couldn't imagine life without this man anymore. That meant a BIG move tho. So I went home and talked to my then 9 YO daughter. She decided she wanted to come with me. So I waited till she got out of school in June and we drove off in a little red Nissan pickup truck with a bed cover thing on it stuffed to the gills with our few possessions we were taking with us.
On August 23rd Steve and I got married with Michele as my maid of honor, Greg as his best man and the other two sons Jeff and Mike as ushers. I barely knew anyone there but it was a sweet wedding. Who knew on that fateful October day what the future was gonna bring? The last guy I'd dated was using my car to go parking with a VERY young girl saying he was going to work. And he was on parole for armed robbery because he was a coke addict! I'd sworn off guys and wasn't gonna date anymore. HA!
So I said all that to say this. Sometimes life takes an unexpected turn. You never know what's around the next corner. You never know what tomorrow may bring. It may be heartache, it may be pain. But there's always another day and there's always hope as long as there's life. Because ONE DAY it will be the most wonderful thing it the world to ever happen to you! So keep the faith. Keep the dream alive. Keep the hope. And hang on to life. You never know what God has in store just for you. I mean after all, it took him 20 years to put Steve and I together!!! And He'll do the same for you if you'll just hang in there one more day...