Fifty and Climbing

So today marks the occasion of our fiftieth wedding anniversary. Fifty years ago, on New Year’s Eve, Nancy and I exchanged vows, and what a good run it has been. Considering this, on a day like today, it seems impossible to me to write about anything else. Why would I even want to? Other topics can wait. The perennial and relevant task of telling my more austere critics that their severities may rhyme with verities but that they are not the same thing . . . is more or less a constant. So that can easily wait for another day.

Certain anniversaries are weighty, and this would be one of them, obviously. It is not as though you can mark everything though. The fiftieth anniversary of the first time I kissed her went by unnoticed. That was a few months ago.

I mentioned yesterday that when we got married in 1975, America was coming up on her 200th birthday the following July. Now, as we celebrate our fiftieth, America is gearing up to celebrate her 250th. If you do the math quickly, you will see that we have been married for one/fifth of the time that an independent America has existed. Nancy said that this makes us old, but I countered with another possibility. America is still young, and we have time to pull it out.

I had joined the Navy right out of high school, and so it is not surprising that being unmarried had seemed normal to me. But as time went on, it started to seem less and less normal, and as the end of my hitch was approaching, I had started to feel the press of reality calling to me. “I need to be married.” I was starting to feel stretched thin.

One time in passing my mother had said to me that she didn’t mind what kind of a girl I brought home—so long as it was a girl like Nancy Greensides. It was just a passing comment, but I did remember it. Nancy had been converted while a student here at the University of Idaho, and had been folded into the (small) Christian community here in Moscow. She then graduated with a degree in English Lit, and was offered a position in several local ministries—part time with InterVarsity and part time with Crossroads Bookstore—Crossroads was an evangelistic literature ministry run by my father. I came home on leave that summer with just a year left in the Navy, and Nancy had driven down from Coeur d’Alene (where her folks lived) to confirm that she did in fact have a position open for her in the fall. And so it was that we met in my parents’ living room. Huh, was my general sentiment. Mom knows what she is talking about.

The situation was perfect. I was a single sailor, and was already giving to three other Christian workers with monthly support, which meant that I had perfect cover. Nancy was coming on staff in Moscow, and I could just add her to the list. Nobody would suspect anything—not that either of us would admit anyway. So for the next year I would send a monthly letter and a check, interrupted only by one stretch where my boat was submerged for two-and-a-half months. Under the Atlantic, and then under the Arctic, I had plenty of time to think about a girl, but not much of an opportunity to write to her.

I received my honorable discharge from the Navy in August of 1975, and we were engaged by the end of September. She was working in my father’s bookstore, where it was natural for me to hang out as a volunteer when I wasn’t in class, and so we had gotten to know each other pretty well. I know it may sound weird to say that our first date was two days after I had proposed, and one day before she said yes, but it was not as weird as all that. We had been working together on a daily basis. Because school had already started when we got engaged, we set the wedding date for Christmas break. I don’t remember how we settled on New Year’s Eve, but we did, and here we are now at fifty years downstream from that splendid occurrence.

Fifty years of boy, was that a good move.

But it was not as though I had everything figured out. I had my guitar, a bicycle, about two linear feet of books, and the GI Bill. And I was going to major in philosophy. “Let’s go for it, babe.”

Let me just mention here some of the reasons why Nancy has been such a good wife, with the only danger being the danger resident in every itemization of things you are grateful for. I refer of course to the danger of leaving something out. But I think you will get the gist.

So here I am, writing in the cyber-gates. Let me tell you about her.

First, Nancy is extraordinarily fruitful. And by this I mean fruitful like a tree, not productive like a factory. Following the example of her mother, from the start she embraced her calling as a mother with diligence, joy and enthusiasm. God in His grace has given us three children. They all married wisely in their own turn, and all of them together with their spouses are walking with the Lord. “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth.” (3 John 4). Nothing is better than that. And as a result of their fruitfulness, we have eighteen grandchildren now, five great grandchildren, and one more great grand on the way. I look at this, astonished. My wife has truly been fruitful (Ps. 128:3).

And in addition to being a dutiful and attentive mother, and grandmother, she was also in turns a baker, a cook, a weaver, a knitter, a seamstress, a teacher at Logos, a student of the Puritans, and the author of eight books or so. Everywhere I go I hear from women who have been extraordinarily blessed through Nancy’s Femina podcast. Her voice is the voice of a mother in Israel, and is one that has been a true encouragement to women all over the world engaged in the arduous task of finding their way back to feminine sanity. And if that needed to be crowned with anything else, I can testify that she practices what she talks about. What a Christian.

The second thing I would mention is of necessity far less visible to outsiders. Some of you may have noticed that I am something of a controversy magnet. These things happen, whether I am minding my own business or not, but when they happen, Nancy remains . . . just . . . steady. Never once has she, for the sake of some carnal peace, asked me to mute the truth in any way that would damage the conscience. Some inane uproar will break out, and Nancy’s response has been to buy me a bottle of nice Scotch, or (back when we were the sabbath hosts for our family) to up the sabbath dinner game. Never once has she asked to me make sure that I don’t endanger the Jew-money. “What Jew-money?” I might ask. “Don’t give me that,” she might reply. “The people online know all about it.” Then we both might laugh.

And that’s another thing. Her sense of humor is just to my taste. When the kids were little, it was not unusual to hear her address them as “ye workers of iniquity.” If not that, then “square bear,” or “sport cake” would have to do. On the back cover of one of her early books, it mentioned there that she was the mother of three children, “none of whom are in the penitentiary.”

I could go in many directions with all of this, but I will mention just one more. Submission has never been a dirty word to her, but neither has she twisted the meaning of “submission” into anything remotely doormattish. The word that comes to my mind is balance. She is a woman of the Word, and has no patience whatever with those convoluted feminist readings, if you want to call them “readings,” of scriptural instructions for women. She takes the divine standards in just the way they were written, which is to say, straight up. Not only does she accept the instruction that Scripture gives to Christian wives—the commands to be submissive and obedient to their husbands—but she loves that standard. At the same time, she has never made the very stupid mistake of thinking that submission somehow means that I was to be left guessing what her counsel or advice might be. We come to our decisions together, and when we are of one mind, which is usually the case, well and good. If we are of two minds, then we work it through. If we are still of two minds after discussion and prayer, she expects me to take responsibility for the decision, which she will then support as though she had made it herself. I have never been left guessing what her mind is on the subject, and also never been left guessing what her level of support will be like.

Okay, this really is the last thing. P.G. Wodehouse once wrote of that hangdog expression that an Englishman has when he is about to speak French. Well, a similar thing happens when an American is about to recite poetry, particularly poetry he has written himself. I am simply going to ask you to read quietly for a couple of minutes, and it is not like I think I am Longfellow or anything. The subject matter is obviously worthy of much greater talent, but it is still necessary to offer what you have.

All the poems are about Nancy, written over the years. Half of them are not anniversary related, but rather have to do with in-between stuff, like sabbaths, or birthdays. But that’s quite all right because anniversaries are actually celebrations of the in-between times, not celebrations of the celebrations.

Here is one that I wrote for our twenty-fifth, when we were just halfway to now. I look back on this one with something of a critical eye, having written it when I was just a kid, still in my forties. For example, rhyming fortunate with fortunate in the first stanza is not done by some of the high end poets, but I feel I get to do it—being doubly fortunate as I am.

As we came up on our fortieth, not discouraged in my rhyming at all, I was still at it.

Emerson once wrote that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, and so here is one that demonstrates that I also know how to write something that doesn’t rhyme.

So yeah, I know. This last one is not an anniversary poem, but rather a birthday poem. Nevertheless, it does demonstrate how I feel, does it not? And isn’t that what really matters these days?

Taking one thing with another, I would invite all of you to rejoice together with me. This is something that I think even many of my adversaries should be able to do. Samuel Johnson put it well when he said, “To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labour tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.”

Happy at home indeed.

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