MEMORIES

I got a phone call yesterday from a very special lady that was instrumental in me being where I am today. I found her youngest daughter through Facebook and we exchanged information and she called me. What a joy! I have not talked with her since 1977. I have lived a lifetime since I have seen or heard from her and her family.
I have to back up a few years to explain. I was living with my sister and her husband in Ft Worth and working at a drug store. I had moved there after graduating from high school. My parents were separated and I made the decision to go to work instead of to college. I was there for about 3 months when Toni called me and told me that she and her family had moved there to work in a church on the south side of Ft Worth. She wanted me to come to church with her. I was mixed up and had just recently broken off an engagement, so basically I just wanted to be left alone for a while. She was very kind to me and told me to call her if I needed anything. She discretely told me about a young man that was home from college because his dad was sick. She said he was such a nice young man and she just knew that I would enjoy meeting him. I told her I was not interested in church or her nice young man. That was in September.
The months dragged on and winter was headed our way. One night I was at my apartment and I just broke down and started crying. I was lonesome and had nowhere to go. I eventually picked up the phone and called Toni and asked her if she could meet me for church the next morning. I did not know until the next day that she had been out of town all week at a retreat and had just gotten home.
The next morning as I walked up the sidewalk of the church to find Toni, I looked up and saw her with a young man standing beside her. She introduced us and then explained that he would take me to the Sunday school room and then bring me back to her when it was over.
To make a long story short, we met, we talked, we went out on a date that evening and four days later he asked me to marry him. He had to return to school in mid January and he came home to see me about every four or five weeks until school was out for that year. We got married in June of that year (1974) and will celebrate our 37th year of knowing each other this year, December 16, 1973-2010.
Steve and I have done a whole lot of living in the past 37 years. We have 4 beautiful children and 7 grandchildren. We have done so many wonderful things together that it would take another lifetime to write it all down.
I look back after receiving this phone call yesterday and I know that it was ordained through God for Toni and Gary Perryman to move from Amarillo to Ft Worth so that I would have what I have today! To my friends Toni and Gary: I will forever be indebted to you for diligently sticking by me during a very rough period in my life.
Thank You seems like such a small thing to say, but there are no other words. From the bottom of my heart: I love you and I am so glad that God brought you into my life! I am also glad that He has given me the opportunity to once again have you back with me!