Celebrations in Style!

We have just got home after the most exhilarating  and wonderful trip to the Seychelles where we celebrated our Ruby Wedding Anniversary on the 9th September (40 years of marriage).  It was a triple celebration really.  One was of our relationship which feels more satisfying and fulfilling than it ever has.  We love each other more with every passing day. Two was of the miracle that I am well enough to be able to make this kind of trip after 15 years of incredible pain and illness.  Thank God for His mercy and for your prayers too! Three was the joy of seeing the believers in the Seychelles again after 23 years since we left them.  The growth and maturity that has come to the churches since we served there as missionaries in the 1980's is remarkable and it was a great joy to renew fellowship with the folk there.

On the day itself we went off to church in the morning and when we returned to our hotel room we found that the maids had covered our room with flowers, even decorating the bathroom!  They had created beautiful arrangements of hibiscus and lemon grass to wish us a happy anniversary and provided us with a lovely celebratory cake.

Every part of that day was special to us both and we feel so privileged to have been able to share it together.  Marriage is so much more than a wedding - even than a ruby wedding!  It is about learning to give your all to someone you love in the knowledge that they give their all to you.  As I often tell young couples preparing to wed - marriage is not give and take - it is all give!  You give your all and they give theirs and then both your needs are met!  That has been our experience through four decades and we are looking forward to the future that God has planned for us.

Second Chance Scenario

My mind was clawing its way slowly back to clarity.  I knew that I was in hospital and that I was desperately ill.  It was February, a few years ago, and I had been to the brink.  Among my early conscious moments after a long period of deep coma I heard two nurses talking.  They were asking each other if either of them had received any Valentine Day cards.  Gradually I caught on, and realised that I had missed this annual opportunity to tell Diane how much she means to me.  I do tell her that every day, of course, but weeks of hospitalisation had robbed us of the daily hugs and reassurance that are part of the paintwork of our marriage.  So I dreamed up a solution.  When my friend Bob came to see me I asked him to buy a rose for Diane and send it to her as if it had come from me.  The only problem was that I couldn't speak.  I tried to write down my instructions and thought I had done so clearly, but years later he showed me the card on which I had scrawled a meaningless array of scratches and lines.  But, he twigged it and realised what I was asking him to do for me.

When Diane received a single red rose later that day she was moved to tears.  I had hardly spoken to her for weeks and was still lying in ICU full of wires and monitors.  'To my darling Diane, from your loving husband' my friend Bob had written.  Through her tears and sobs, she tells me, my wife began to hope that I might come back again from the valley of the shadow of death.  And I did.  God was so gracious to us.  He gave us back to one another  and allowed us to share again in a relationship that has been so special since the very first day we saw one another, February 29th 1968 - leap year day.

So - you can imagine how special Valentine's Day is to us each year.  A simple single red rose tells us both that we serve the God of the Second Chance!  Each year we look at that little flower and remember the One who says 'I will restore to you the years that the locusts have eaten!'  This year more than ever, we are so grateful for that understanding.

What a Day!

It is so hard to face this fact - but on this very day, the 9th September 1972, yes, 39 long years ago, Diane and I were married.  We had absolutely no idea of the kind of exciting life we were destined to lead.  Maybe if we had, at least one of us would have pulled out before the ceremony!  The service was held in our home church at Vazon Elim in Guernsey within earshot of the nearby sand races on the beach.  The windows of the church building were open and we could hardly hear ourselves think above the roar of motor bike and racing car engines.  But I do remember these words:
'I, Eric, do take thee, Diane to be my wedded wife... I will love her, comfort her, honour and keep her, in sickness and in health, and forsaking all others, will keep myself only unto her, as long as we both shall live.'  Diane said the same to me.  We meant it.  I was at her side as she battled through 13 years of crippling anxiety and depression. Together we faced the issues that were tearing at her peace.  Together we found answers that would enable us both to receive not only wholeness, but to go on and serve God in remote corners of the world.  Not without fear, but in spite of it.

Then Diane has stayed by my side like a limpet through my 15 year battle with the appalling disease pancreatitis.  She has been there for me when I was deep in coma, acting as my advocate in hospitals around the British Isles.  She has protected me, prayed for me, believed for me when my faith was failing, waited for me, trusted with me and rejoiced with me in these early days of return from the battlefield.  I want her to have the joy of many more years without pain, but this is a partnership that will not be measured in years or even decades.

Without doubt the best part of our wedding day was flying away at the end on honeymoon.  We crossed by air to Jersey and in those days the airline used to weigh passengers on a big public scale and then assign your seating according to your weight!  As you can see, we did not have too much to be embarrassed about getting on to the scales then - but if it was now!  Well, we sat on the pier in Jersey eating chips out of the paper, in a Morris 1100 hire car with no carpets or heater, and just gazed into the distance together.  Good thing we could not glimpse what was really up ahead.  But Jesus did, and He chose us for each other. We are so grateful that He did.