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On July the 4th I turned 47. Life is funny when you’re 18. You imagine you will always be 18 and with each passing year you don’t contemplate getting older but we do. I don’t really feel much different than I did when I was 18 or I have suddenly changed to the point of not noticing. The one thing I tend to do on my birthdays is reflect back on the past year and years and see how much my life has changed.

I wrote a book a few years ago titled “A True Journey of Faith” and “Journey” describes my life to a tee. I have been married three times and when I look back I see that all but one was a mistake and should have never happened. But I was young and searching for a home, something I had not found. I was looking for a beginning to stay until my end but it always eluded me. My first wife had several mental illnesses all at once, something I knew nothing about for the first seven years of our marriage. The last three were spent trying to find help for her. But in the end it was not meant to be. One night I came home from work. I worked the second shift. She took my truck keys and left. We divorced and that was that. The whole time we were married it was a roller coaster up and down all the way. Once illnesses prevented her from being able to bear children so once divorced we were no longer attached.

My second marriage sent me all the way to Michigan where I thought I had finally found my place. I was ordained and preached in the church that she and her family had been affiliated for years. I was settled but she wasn’t. And after only five years she wanted to be free from any sort of marriage being that she immediately married me after she was divorced from her first husband. He was an abusive tyrant of a man. I moved back to Johnson City after the divorce where I met my third wife. This was the worst of all. In fact, she had it added to the divorce that it’s not allowed to divulge any aspect of that marriage. The only good thing to come from it was my precious son.

Then I met Lorie. The woman I have been waiting for my entire life. She is kind beyond words, and has a good heart. Gentle and sweet are not strong enough words to do her justice. We are set to be married next year and I look forward to our adventures together. My son adores her. She is gentle with him. She is a woman that shows him affection, something he has not been used to. So now, on my 48th birthday, I will have the family I have always longed for. I have a son that makes the honor roll and already has in mind what career he wants and a wife that loves me for me and even puts up with all my goofiness.