Ridgell's Originals

We made it to 40 years last Sunday.  Amazing.  Hard to believe.  Wonderful.  Exciting.  So here are some of my thoughts on why I am a blessed man.

God gets the glory.  We met in church.  She was in the youth group and I was leading singing.  At Southern Hills.  Yep, same church where I am an elder.  God put us together, kept us together, and still is the center of our marriage.  Without God, we wouldn't be together.  Without God, we wouldn't be this happy.

People seem so amazed when we tell them 40 years.  I guess you don't see as many of those as you would like.  Or maybe they don't believe someone that looks as young as Marsha could be married that long.

So here is how we made it 40 years.

Pray lots.  We have prayed for our kids, for our marriage, for each other, for our ministry.  We have prayed about every major decision in our life together.

Love hard.  She still makes my heart skip a beat when I see her.  She's still my girl.  I'm still her guy.  It works this way.  I did a hard funeral a couple of weeks ago.  Was standing by the casket greeting everyone. Saw her coming thru the line and we had to hug and she kissed me.  I needed her.  She knew it.  Love.

Laugh often.  We still have a good time.  We like to be together.  We enjoy life.

Cry too.  We still cry.  We cry over family problems.  We cry over church people we love.  We cry over lost people.  We cry with lots of people.

Go to church.  We are church people.  Raised our kids in church.  Will be in church till we die.  Still the best place to be to make it thru this world.

Talk about Jesus.  We still spend a lot of time helping people find Jesus.  It's what we do.

Help others.  We help couples put Jesus back in their marriage.  We show up at the hospital and pray.  We are there when tragedy strikes.  It is what we do.

She said I can't say the other thing I was going to talk about.  But trust me... it's still special too.

So I don't know how many more years we will celebrate.  God is in charge of that.  But as long as he wills, we will keep loving him, loving each other, and loving those God puts in our life.

Thanks God.  You did an amazing thing when you put us together.  It has made all the difference for me.