Our Love Story

It’s hard to even imagine that Joe and I have been married for 33 years. Where has the time gone? The kids are grown up and we are getting accustomed to life as empty nesters. Life is good! We are enjoying a time of renewed love and freedom as we navigate this new season. But as most marriages go, it hasn’t always been that way.

Our love story began when I was a senior in high school and Joe was in the tenth grade. Let’s just say I knew who he was vaguely only because when you go to a small school, you kind of know everybody. On this particular day, I was going to lunch (seniors went to the front of the line) as I passed by him, I felt the Holy Spirit speak to me and say, “this is the man you will marry”. Now as a teenager who wasn’t exactly living a very Godly life, I really didn’t know what to do with that information, but I was curious. Curious enough to ask a mutual friend of ours about him. Funny enough when our friend asked him if he might want to go out with me, he said, “Oh Peggy, I don’t know!!”. We laugh about that now because he didn’t know what I knew. All he saw was a girl who wore her hair in a high ponytail on the top of her head and a sweatshirt inside out (it was the 80’s, what can I say)!  Needless to say, we did go out and soon fell in love.

At this point, I had already made my commitment to go the Air Force soon after I graduated. When I returned home after basic training Joe proposed to me. We were going to be married. But we had some obstacles we had to overcome. Joe still had to finish school, and I had just received my orders to be stationed in Nebraska. How would this ever work? I didn’t know but God knew! We got married June 14, 1991, in Plattsmouth, Nebraska by a justice of the peace in the local courthouse. She wore what looked like a cat clawed black robe and pink house slippers. A memory we will never forget!

That was the beginning of what I would call a lifetime of figuring out who we were, who God wanted us to be and how we could come together to fulfill His purpose for our lives. I am thankful for Gods direction in that lunch line that day. It’s taken me a lot of years to realize just how fortunate I am to have married a man that God handpicked for me.

Ephesians 5:31 Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.