It’s Been One Hell of a Ride …

Today is our 25th wedding anniversary. Not that our kids noticed or anything, but what surprises me is that it ever happened at all.

At the time I was on the pastoral staff of University Christian Church in Berkeley. A week or so before the wedding I preached about the stress of getting ready for the wedding. We took a break from everything going on and sat down to watch a movie. Independence Day was one of the worst movies of all time.

The night before the wedding was the rehearsal. I was also a graduate student instructor at UC Berkeley at the time and for some strange reason the university had scheduled the final exam for the class at exactly the same time as the rehearsal. Fortunately, one of the other GSIs — my much older friend Jonathan P. Spiro (who is now the soon-to-be-retired president of Castleton University in Vermont and three months older than me) — volunteered to proctor my students. I should point out that one of my students was Crown Prince Haakon of Norway, who at the time was one of the most eligible bachelors in the world. So did I take my daughter to meet the Crown Prince? No, I took my son.

I forget whether it was Friday afternoon or Saturday morning that we went to pick up the tuxedos we had rented. We would have gotten them on Thursday but the rental company had mistaken their Sunrise Mall location in Sacramento for the Sun Valley Mall in Concord we were picking them up from and so they arrived late. There was also a “slight” mix-up in my son Justin’s rental in that the jacket sleeves extended down past his knees. Since we figured someone might notice, we needed a quick alteration. Try finding a tailor two hours before a wedding that could handle it. No stress there!

Anyway, we made the wedding, on time and everything. As Lynne and I were recessing down the aisle having been married by not one but three ministers (thank you Tina Heck, Bob and Diana Green), my back started spasming to the point I could barely walk.

After that, it was a piece of cake. Happy anniversary, Lynne. I love you more every day and am ready for the next 25!