Restoring Kingdom Builders

Today is the anniversary of the day that my wife Kim and I were married.

You know, it doesn’t seem that long ago.

Kim’s father became the pastor of my church in the summer of 1973.  I had just been hired by the elders to be the youth pastor for the summer.  I told a good friend that I hoped the new pastor’s two oldest daughters were ugly so I could focus on my ministry.

One day, just after I started work, a large blue Suburban pulled up in front of the church office.  All eight members of the new pastor’s family had driven together from Chicago to Garden Grove, and they wanted to know the location of their temporary home.  While telling them, I hardly noticed who was in the vehicle.

Over the next few weeks, I don’t remember talking to Kim, even though I was the new youth guy.  One of my best friends, though, saddled up to me and asked, “How can I get to know Kim?”

But I wasn’t interested – in anybody.

Yet one night, after talking with her a little, I asked Kim if she’d like to go to the San Diego Zoo the following Saturday.  She said yes.  My brother John had asked a girl to go with him, too.

Every week in a discipleship group I led, I assigned a spiritual exercise called a “discipline.”  The discipline for that week was that no one in the group was supposed to listen to the radio.  (Hey, music in 1973 wasn’t all that great anyway.)  So instead of listening to tunes while I drove to San Diego, Kim and I talked.  (I don’t know what my brother was doing in the back seat.)

And we talked as we walked around the zoo.  And we talked when I drove home.

While I liked Kim, I didn’t really know what to do after that.  But one guy in the group definitely did.  He invited her out the following Friday night to a car race.  She went.  I heard about it and wasn’t happy.  (I was thinking about asking the Lord to revoke his salvation.)

One night, Kim shared that she was having a hard time with the boy friend she left back in Chicago.  I offered to listen.  We ended up driving to the beach.

I came home and told my mother that I knew I had met the girl I was going to marry.

A few nights later, I was at home when I heard a noise outside.  There was toilet paper hanging from our mailbox –  at 7:30 in the evening.  I looked around for the culprit, and found Kim, hiding under a car.

That was a good sign.

I asked her out again the following weekend, and then took her to Disneyland.  When you took a girl to Disneyland back then, it represented a sizeable investment.

Another night, some people from our church went to the Los Angeles Rescue Mission to put on a service.  When I heard that Kim was going, my interest in Skid Row skyrocketed.  She gave a testimony that night, and I sensed how much she cared about people who hurt.

Another time, we went to the Griffith Park Observatory and stayed out late.  Kim’s dad didn’t know where we were, and he had the cops combing Griffith Park looking for us.  (Kim sauntered in around 4:30 am., but that was the last time we ever tried that move!)

Honestly, we were just talking.

After dating Kim for only two months, Kim’s dad had a meeting with my brother and me one night.  (My brother was dating her sister.)  Her father told us that he blessed both of our relationships.  That was cool.

Kim and I stayed up all night before the Rose Parade in Pasadena the following New Year’s Day, and for the first time, we started talking about getting married.  We were young but in love.

We went together for two years before tying the knot.  The ceremony was held at our home church.

I had taken a full-time job as church custodian (I prefer the term ecclesiastical engineer) so we could get married before I started seminary.  The morning of the ceremony, I came to church to spend my normal 5 hours cleaning up the place before Sunday – and promptly locked my keys in the car.  Only my mother had an extra key, and she laughed uproariously when she arrived to let me in.

Later on, the deacons told me they had voted that I didn’t have to clean up the church on my wedding day – but they forgot to tell me.  (If I hadn’t done it, who would have?)

The church was packed even though it was a scorching hot afternoon.  Kim’s dad preached a l-o-n-g sermon while we both knelt on stage.

We went to Yosemite for our honeymoon.  We were so financially challenged that our friends rifled through the wedding cards and gave us any cash they found.

That was 36 years ago!

When we first started dating, Kim and I had a serious discussion about the future.  I believed that God had called me to be a pastor.  She preferred to be a missionary.  I couldn’t envision myself living overseas in another culture.  But because we couldn’t envision living apart, either, she gave up her dreams for me.

There are so many things I love about Kim.  She is kind, sweet, compassionate, energetic, feisty, EC – and a lot of fun.

But most of all, I love her heart.

2 children, 3 apartments, 9 houses, 9 churches, and 10 surgeries later, we’re still madly in love – and truth be told, just plain mad.

Right before we started dating, Gordon Lightfoot came out with a song called Beautiful.  The song begins:

At times, I just don’t know

How you could be anything but beautiful

To think that I was made for you

And you were made for me

That’s how I still feel, more than three decades after marrying my bride.

Happy anniversary, Kimbelina!  I love you now more than ever.