A PORTRAIT OF A MARRIAGE

Happy 30th Anniversary, Gunslinger.

My favorite portrait of us is not my favorite because I look good in it- I’m not even in it. It’s not because we look happy, or because it’s a wonderful memory -

it’s April 2023. I’m not in front of the Camera, I’m behind it, and you are fighting for your life.

You’ve already died once. You coded on the Helicopter after I helped load you onto it, following your ejection from the fire truck. Your amazing Medical Team revived you, popped chest tubes into you, then transferred you thanks to Family and Friends who moved heaven and earth to get you out of the ER and into ICU.

In this portrait, you have 27 broken bones, two collapsed lungs, a shattered spine and ribcage, a compound femur fracture, internal bleeding, and we are anticipating the signs of massive brain trauma, as evidenced by the blood in your ears.

18 hours after your wreck, we are awaiting your first trauma surgery. You’ve managed to live through the night, but you are not yet stable; but we cannot wait. You are going to die unless you go into surgery.

We don’t know it yet, but you will spend the next two and a half weeks on life support. We don’t know if you will ever walk again, if you will ever be able to speak, or swallow, or even breathe; we don’t if you will be wheeled out of ICU in a coffin or spend your life in a geri-chair and I don’t care because I just want you to by God LIVE…

and you and I will have the longest, most expensive and most spiritual vacation we will ever experience, at Baylor Hillcrest in Waco.

In this portrait, I do not know the way ahead, and I am clinging to Family, Friends and Jesus Christ; but I still fear evil, for the Valley of the Shadow is a dark, dark place.

Then you raised your hand, giving me a thumbs up - and a defiant grin.

There will never be another portrait that so poetically portrays our marriage than this photo of you. Lying there absolutely shattered, the world in chaos, with everything we know and love on the line…

then you raised your hand in triumph, a smile on your face, and Christ in your heart.

The years come and go; challenges will arise, complications will occur and storms will roar, sundering earth and sky -

but when you walk into the room tonight with three decades of marriage worn on your body like a boxer’s scars, know that I carry my own - and each scar was worth the pain, worth the cost, just to see that smile;

a portrait of a Marriage, etched upon my Heart.