Happy Anniversary, Katrina!


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I’ve been in Southern Illinois much of the week, preaching at a well-attended joint FWB conference there; but away from the internet and unable to blog.  I’m happy to report that during my time there I managed to write my annual short story for TDF’s Christmas Eve service.  I’m back in Nashville now, and I wanted to post these pictures in my journal.  It’s a handful of our wedding photos, for today’s our 33rd wedding anniversary.

I had stumbled through the world’s worst proposal, and Katrina had accepted.  Truth was, we didn’t know one another all that well, and we finally decided we’d just get married and see what would happen.  On the last week of August, 1976, I laid down in the backseat of my parents’ car for the trip to New England.  I’d injured my back (from a sneeze of all things) and had been in excruciating pain.  We drove from Roan Mountain to somewhere in Pennsylvania, and then on to South Paris, Maine, the next day, where we checked into Goodwin’s Motel.  I went for long walks in the cemetery across the street, trying to loosen up my back and figure out what I was doing.  By the time of the wedding, I was a nervous wreck, and throughout the ceremony I shook like a man with Parkinson’s disease.  There was a luncheon after the ceremony, than Katrina and I took off for Canada.  We spent our first night in Montreal, our second in Toronto, and our remaining time in Niagara Falls.  Our wedding pictures were destroyed when our house burned down two years later, but someone salvaged some proofs for us, a few of which I’m posting here.

Katrina is the world’s one-and-only perfect woman for me!  We’re celebrating at home tonight.  I think I’m going to fix one of our favorite meals—creamed chicken over rice with biscuits, and perhaps one of Julia Child’s cakes for dessert, or maybe a pie from one of the butternut squash in the garden.

Happy anniversary, Katrina!  I love you!

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