41 Years of Marriage to a Beautiful Woman

So It Began

In 1974 I jumped into a VW Beetle and drove from San Jose, California to Chicago, Illinois with a college friend.  We were beginning seminary together.  I was dead serious.  No play.  No fun.  No girls.  It was New Testament Greek, Old Testament Hebrew, theology and the Bible.  I looked  forward to long hours in the library and great theological discussions over a cup of coffee with classmates.  Then I met Marlys.

She was a farm girl from Iowa–petite and pretty.  Mind you, I’m not that superficial, looks were important but I had a few other qualities on my list of the perfect woman. She had to be athletic and play basketball.  She had to be a neat person and not messy. Most importantly, the woman of my dreams had to love the Lord with all her heart.  I found all three qualities in the woman who became my wife in 1976.

Celebration

Marlys and I are celebrating forty-one years of marriage.  After all those years and seven children later, she continues to hold my heart with her beauty and grace.  Marlys is a nurturing mother.  She has a listening ear.  Her patience and long suffering amaze me.

In my brief sixty-eight years of life on earth, I have made two great decisions.  First and foremost, I have repented of my sins and called on Jesus Christ for eternal life. Second, I asked Marlys to be my wife.  Both decisions changed everything.

Long ago a man by the name of Lemuel wrote a tribute to an excellent wife.  “An excellent wife, who can find?  For her worth is far above jewels.  The heart of her husband trusts in her, and he will have no lack of gain.  She does him good and not evil all the days of her life…she girds herself with strength and makes her arms strong….She extends her hand to the poor and she stretches out her hands to the needy…Her children rise up and bless her; her husband also, and he praises her, saying; ‘Many daughters have done nobly, but you excel them all.’  Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord, she shall be praised.”  (Proverbs 31:10-30)

Thank you, Marlys for forty-one wonderful years!

(By Warren Coe, Executive Director, Village Schools of the Bible.)