Marriage and Such

Here is my next Love Letter to my kids.

How old were you and your wife when you were married? Describe plans, hopes etc. at that time.

In a lot of ways when Roni and I got married, we were still just kids. I had turned 23 less than two months before and she had turned 22 less than a month before. Yet we knew this was what we were supposed to be doing. I will say this, I'm not sure 22-23 is the age that I want my own kids to be getting married, at least as I look at now.

I can't really say that we had any really big plans at the time we got married. I was working for Budget Rent-A-Car and Airport Valet in Amarillo at the time and Roni had just recently finished up a stint as the youth minister at First United Methodist Church in Quanah, TX. Early on our plan had been to get married and move to the Midland area where I could finish school at UTPB and continue as the youth minister at FUMC in Stanton. At the time it had seemed like a good plan. As the wedding got closer however I ended up leaving Stanton and going to work at Budget. All the while however we were looking for a job in youth ministry since that was really where I felt I was called (and still do).

We finally landed in Abernathy, TX as the youth minister after being married for about 2 months. Once we were somewhat stable, we began to try and figure out what those hopes and dreams of ours might be. Our first hope was to get my bank account straightened out. As a result of being a college student and an idiot with my money, I had been in a state of constant overdraft it seemed. Once we got married and finally found a job in youth ministry that was going to pay us enough to live, that was our first priority. We were able to do that fairly quickly too, so that was nice. After that we just wanted to be the best we could be as far as youth ministry went there in small town West Texas.

Besides that, we were beginning to talk about having a family. We both knew that we wanted to have kids, but the time line was not in focus at first. I would have been fine with having kids right away (at least I thought I would be), but Roni wanted to wait. We ended up waiting over 2 1/2 years before we got pregnant with Boo, and had been married for nearly 3 1/2 by the time she was born. It was one of the best plans we had ever made, both to wait to have our kids but also to have kids. That has been one of the hopes from the early days of marriage that has far exceeded anything we could have imagined.

At the time we got married we were still kids basically. We didn't know what our long term hopes and dreams were, and even the ones we did have been tweaked and changed in the near 11 years the beginning of this crazy ride. We are still yearning to be the best ministers we can be to the youth of our church, now located in Quitman, TX. I know that I still love Roni with all my heart and truly far beyond that. In all honesty, that is all that I really ever hoped and dreamed for: to be able to marry a woman that I would be able to love for the rest of my days, and that is what I have been given. I hope that her plans and hopes of the time were at least similar to what mine were, and I hope that our hopes and plans continue to grow with us as we grow together. Peace and Love y'all.