Forever And Ever Amen

June 12, 2021

**The blog is a little bit different this week. Joe wrote these words, just not in the little black notebook. These are the words he wrote on my heart. Back to the notebook next week, I promise.**

Today is our wedding anniversary. Don’t you be sad for me—I mean it. Well, ok, you can be sad for just one second, but then I need to you to think these thoughts: This day was a very, very good day. June 12^th is the day Joe became my forever, and forever doesn’t end.

I told someone this week that Joe and I are the LUCKY ones, to have known a love so sweet and true. Some people live and die and never know how that really feels, so if you want to feel sorry, let it be for those people, not for me.

I believe that our lives are like books, and each person who crosses our path is a chapter. The chapter begins the moment that person enters your life and ends with the last breath. I used to think it ended when they walked out of your life, but you never know when a person might reappear. Ask me how I know…☺️

I am but a chapter in your book, and you are but a chapter in mine. So maybe, somewhere between this life and the next, we are allowed the chance to flip through the pages.

If you see my book, I feel certain you’ll notice that one chapter looks a little more weathered than the others. I wish I could tell you just where to flip to in order to find these pages, but as Joe showed us, not one of us knows when Jesus will put down His pen in our story. But you’ll recognize this chapter by the dog eared, worn out pages. There may be many other pages after this one (or maybe just a few), but this one…oh, this chapter is a favorite.

No matter how many pages the good Lord writes in my book, I will always go back to this chapter. It is called “My Sweet Joe”. I will read it again and again, and I will laugh, and I will cry. My tears are full–so very full–of gratitude and happiness and LIFE, because it was Joe who taught me how to live and how to love. Joe may not appear in as much of the book as I had hoped, and he may not be in the final chapters, but he did change the story forever.

Of course, I would have written the ending differently. Still, I will read this chapter again and again, partly because so much of it is wonderful and partly because I simply love the Author.

At the very end of my book (and yours, too), you’ll find an epilogue. You know…that’s the part where you read “the rest of the story”. Ironically, that part is already written. It is a promise from God himself. If you’ve read the Bible, you already know that it all works out in the end.

June 12^th is a very, very good day. It is the day Joe became my forever, and in Heaven, forever doesn’t end. So, we do live happily ever after. Only this time, I don’t have to give him back.

There’s a line from the movie Steel Magnolias that has always been one of my favorites:  “I’d rather have thirty minutes of wonderful than a lifetime of nothing special.”

My thirty minutes was wonderful. I wouldn’t change a thing.

Happy Anniversary in Heaven to my sweet Joe.  

It was always you, JMP.

It was always you.❤️