Thirty-three years ago today I was still asleep in a tiny hotel room in Harlingen Texas, my family and groomsmen were asleep all over the hotel, it had been a long night so I slept late. That hotel has long since been torn down and replaced with strip shopping and office centers. This was such an important day that I still remember it well, you see after six and a half years of engagement (full of lots of mistakes on my part and maybe one or two from my amazing future wife) we were to be married that day at three-thirty in the afternoon. We had argued about what church to have the wedding in, (even though we no longer attended either) so we settled on neutral ground, the Harlingen Country Club, that midcentury modern structure was destroyed in a hurricane but was replaced a few years ago with a more culturally fitting structure. The event was a big deal in that little town, not because of Madeline and me, but because of her well-known parents that were a cornerstone to Harlingen’s social scene. We, on the other hand, were a mess, Madeline had just finished College a few weeks before and I was working in Houston full time in industrial sales work all over Houston. I had rented a small house for us to move into in Bellaire, it was my Grandmother’s house before she up and left for Indiana where her roots were as a child. It was a dump of a house that I was embarrassed to show her but we could afford it! A few years later we had to move from this house because it became a thirteen bucket house and we only had eleven total pans and buckets to catch the Houston rain running through the roof and ceilings. The leak over our heads in our bed was the last straw!So as ashamed as I was about that house, I am more ashamed now about something that happened that day, I started drinking bourbon at about one in the afternoon from a flask I was given for this occasion. I kept sipping on that flask until minutes before the ceremony. I was a heavy drinker then but had problems with alcohol since somewhere around thirteen years old. God cured me of that affliction over twenty years ago now, and for that, I am very thankful! So I remember my wedding but not as much as I would like to, I remember Madeline walking down the Aisle in her amazing dress, oh what a train that dress had! I remember it was eighty degrees out on January seventieth (but that is South Texas)! I remember that the club staff put three durra-flame logs in the fireplace at the bride's request and this caused the Preacher and me to be overheating during the service, no joke we were like a nineties model Jeep Cherokee in west Texas in August! In fact, the Preacher looked like he would pass out at any second, he was an older thin man and I was ready to catch him at any second. But the service and the reception went on without a hitch, well, except that we were now hitched. I have often called that the toughest sell of my life, but it took decades more to really convince her parents that I was a permanent fixture.Tonight we will celebrate thirty-three years together, but I must admit that this last year has been the best one yet. I know that sounds nuts with all the death, cancer, surgeries and other turmoil that has occurred, but through it all, we are closer now that we have ever been. Through our work together at Re/engage there is a confidence in our foundation in Christ that has never been more balanced, or as strong as it is now! So Madeline if you are reading this Happy Anniversary, it has been a great thirty-Three years and I look forward to as many more as the Lord will grant us!Today’s Bible Challenge is in Second Chronicles Twelve, please read/listen along with us daily here from the offices of the Little Hundred Acre Wood just south of Granbury Texas! second wedding dresses for older brides https://www.blueletterbible.org/audio_video/popPlayer.cfm?type=nasb_n&b=14&c=12

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