20 YEARS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"Through tears and laughter, it's still forever after, all this time." A line from a favorite song of mine which represents this many years. I met him at 16-years-old. I fell straight for him in a shot. I told my sister who was going to tell him, but I decided to slam her into the wall with a bed mattress we were moving at the time. I told my mom that I wanted to date him and she told me that he was too old for me...yeah, 10 years older and so much more experienced in the world. He had been married before with a son, but I didn't care. He went to our church and although I was shy around him, it didn't stop me from writing little notes and hearts around the edge of my church program or inside the pages of my notebook. Mom told me that I was still in school and needed to date my own age, but there was no one to compare to him. The way he made me feel was so incredible that I wanted to bottle that feeling and save it for the days I wouldn't be able to see or talk to him, which wasn't much. After I graduated from high school at 17, I told Mom again I wanted to date him, and again she said no, too young Two months later she went ahead and told me that if I went out on a date with him that afterwards she wanted me to go out with a different guy close to my own age. She told him that I wrote him a note but forgot it, and told me that he wanted me to write him a note asking for a date, which I did. I knew that I didn't want anyone else. He asked me to move in with him and I said I'd think about it. Being a church going girl and all, asked my friends and elders what I should do, which they had no trouble telling me. I told them I knew what I had to say, to turn him down. Well, when I talked to him, I told him yes. His mom had other ideas. She told him that him being a Christian and all that you don't just live with someone you marry them, which he told me and then asked me to marry him. I promptly said YES! So a year and a day after I graduated I got married. No air conditioning in the church, the icing fell off the cake, but it was a great wedding. I had a stepson, 1 sister-in-law and 4 brothers-in-law not to mention a wonderful mother and father-in-law...who still make me smile when I think of them. I had 3 children by the age of 22, and was a step-grandma by 38, but I wouldn't change hardly any of it. We have had our ups and downs, our fights, tears, sleepless nights, and we're still here, still together. I love him more now than when I saw him at 16, and I'm just as floored sometimes by my feelings as when I had them then. So, babe, here's to another 20 years. And for my best friend, my mom, and the pastor who refused to marry us...it did last longer than the 3-6 weeks you gave us!!!