celebrating my anniversary

today is my 39th wedding anniversary
I didn't know what to do with August 6 last year
because I wasn't a wife anymore
and I thought "what does a widow do with her anniversary"?

this year, knowing I would be at the beach with Deborah and her family
I wondered how I would feel,
I questioned how I would do so far from home
and sometime Wednesday I figured it out

Bill is not here beside me anymore
but I realized that does not negate the fact 
that this is the anniversary of my wedding 
I can celebrate it and the sweet memories I have because of that day

I will embrace the gift of being married to Bill for 37 years
I will rejoice that while our marriage was not perfect,
the life we built together was very good
and if I was given the choice to marry him again, I would

last night Deborah and I were shopping
she was shopping with an agenda,
I went along mostly to keep her company
but I found and bought myself the perfect anniversary gift 

this celebrates a truth I learned over the years
this truth is what feeds my soul
this truth is what keeps me going day in and day out

"Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? ... For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love                                                        of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

One of my favorite passages is Romans 8. This is from Romans 8:35-39