Anniversary

 

My wife is amazing!  She has been a wonderful helpmeet to me for fifty years!  Our fiftieth anniversary will be October 2 this year.  We celebrated our first-year anniversary camping out in the Great Smokey Mountains near the Tennessee - North Carolina border in Cades Cove, about 25 miles from Gatlinburg, Tennessee.  It was cheaper and more exciting than a motel.  We got to the campground late at night and the ranger station was closed.  So we picked out a spot and set up our borrowed two-man pup tent.  Just as I finished hammering in the last tent stake into the ground, a soft rain began, and it continued all night. Sometime in the wee hours of the morning, water infiltrated the tent and our blankets got soaked.  Kathy and I retreated to our car, sleeping sitting up (only slightly reclining) in our 1969 Rambler American.  I had to start the car every thirty minutes to warm up.  We didn’t sleep with the car running because Kathy was afraid of carbon monoxide poisoning from the exhaust.  I got up early to fix breakfast only to find that I had forgotten the stove’s propane tank at home.  So we rolled up our wet blankets and wet tent, and headed to Gatlinburg for breakfast.  The fall colors were finished, and the winter season hadn’t started, so most of the motel rooms were marked down to just ten dollars a night.  So much for my best-laid-plans.  But my wife and I didn’t care.  We had each other, and that was all that mattered.  Solomon said in Proverbs 31:10-12, “Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies. The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her …She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life.”  Kathy has been perfect for me.  I am blessed and grateful.