The Hancock-Henderson Quill, Inc.
April and I attended a marriage conference last Saturday. You would think after 46 years of being married, we would have figured it out. We have, but when you’re our age, you forget so many things you believe you’re learning new things. Apparently, we had forgotten we had marriage figured out.
It didn’t start well. We became lost. We knew it was in Morning Sun, Iowa. Logically, we drove to Morning Sun. We felt good about our ability in finding Morning Sun. So much so, we stopped at the local Casey’s for coffee and a doughnut.
You would think a church would be as easy to find as Casey’s. True to that logic, once we embarked on a tour of every street in Morning Sun, we spotted every church. Just not the church we were supposed to be at. That caused a dilemma for us. What do we do now? Go back to Casey’s for another doughnut?
Luckily, we live in the age of smart phones. April and I may not have known where the church was, but our smart phones would turn into forty-something children and help us out. Forty-something children know everything. They know what their parents should eat, what they should wear, what TV shows they should watch, and when they should go to the bathroom. The things forty-something children know are boundless, which means aged parents could never remember it at all. Which is why parents have forty-something children. They remember everything. Which I had already said earlier in the paragraph, but I forgot.
Luckily, April had her smart phone. That was actually fortunate as I don’t know how to make my smart phone be smart. To me, it should be smart automatically, or why call it a smart phone?
We finally reached the church, which wasn’t even in Morning Sun. A law should exist against a church advertising its location in a town when it’s at least six miles outside of town. It confuses the aged. In addition, we had already missed quite a bit of the conference from the previous night.
After settling into our pew seats, the speaker informed the audience he would spend the rest of the conference discussing a small word of three letters, and it begins with ‘s.’ Immediate regret came over April and me. Our thoughts were in sync.
We’re not prudes. The topic doesn’t embarrass us. But would we go to a conference about riding a bicycle if we’ve been riding a bicycle for forty-five years? But we’re polite people, and we sat quietly through two hours of the topic. It didn’t kill us or scar us for the rest of our lives.
Later, while in a small-group setting, we were asked this question: “What did you like most about the marriage conference?” I was tempted to say, “Nothing.” I was tempted to say once you know how to ride a bicycle, not much more anyone can add to that. I was tempted to say the coffee and doughnuts from Casey’s.
Instead the word ‘priority’ came out of my mouth. I admitted that when April and I were in our twenties, that little 3-letter word beginning with ‘s’ was a bit of a priority. But in the season of life we’re in now, our priorities have changed.
When you’re in your twenties, you’re prone to think you’re going to live forever. You believe you’ll always be that active, strong beast of a person. Once you get into the upper-sixties, you see life differently.
April and I don’t know how many more years we will have together. Granted, theoretically, it could be one more day. But we know we’re nearing the end of our time together. That’s where our new priority lies.
We simply want to be together for as long as God grants us the time to be together.
We want to hold each other’s hand. We want to laugh together. We want to know the other one is always nearby. We want to support each other in all our silly interests. We want to know each other’s thoughts.
For us, that’s a wonderful priority, and one we cherish together.