Happy Birthday, Marilyn!

Today is my wife's birthday, and like most days in her life, it will be all about other people. (The picture on the right is old now, but it's of us at Disney, our favorite place in the world.)  She's at work right now; I hope some of the good folks there will take her to lunch.  Later today she will be serving as a band booster for Will's marching band at Sickles High; I hope we can work in a birthday dinner somewhere along the way.  But that's Marilyn- always going the extra mile for other people, and especially for family.

She has survived some ridiculous things in our 23 years together.  Before Will was born in 1995, she took most of  her vacation time to go on youth trips and spend hours on the road with teenagers.  The first few years after Will was born, she had to take care of him by herself quite often as I was still on the road with those teens.  She put up with late night phone calls, unexpected visits and spending way too much of the family budget on our ministry.  She even put up with being married to an idiot, and she never lost faith in me or in God.  I don't know if people marvel at her steadfast devotion to Jesus and her family, but they should! 

So today, I wish a happy birthday to the best wife and best friend an idiot ever had!  A long time ago, when we were dating, I gave her a stuffed bear named Boo, and we began calling each other Boo as our "pet names".  This was the very early 1980's, mind you, so we were Boo before Boo was cool!  Happy birthday, Boo...I can never give you everything you deserve, but I will always love you.  Now we just have to survive this one last teenager...

Because of Jesus,