A heaviness of heart prevents my fingers from dancing over this keyboard in celebration for this day. For days I have pieced thoughts and memories to share in the hope you would celebrate with us. Fifty eight… 58 years, the beginning of a journey, March 14, 1964.

But I cannot… I cannot finish the initial post with true, but fun, frivolous thoughts.  In an insecure world, full of war and madness, today I am grateful for the security of ‘us’. Through tears, I bow in gratitude that the Lord, does indeed, honor obedience when two people commit ‘to love, honor and cherish each other from this day forward’.

“There is a time for everything… a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance… Ecclesiastes 3:4

These current days are so BIG with sorrow. How can I dance? We received a message from a pastor friend in Vienna yesterday telling of Jura, a Ukrainian driver who transported goods the church had collected to an orphanage in the war zone. “On the way back, he was detained and then brutally beaten by Russian soldiers. He is now missing.”

It was then I knew I could not finish my blog. For hours I prayed for this man’s safety and his heart. Vienna is 824 miles from Kiev— not so very far… and my heart is not so very far from Vienna. Imagine my joy this morning when we received this text, “Jura  just called! ‘I am thankful to be alive.’ He is driving back, bringing refugees with him. Thank you for praying.”

I can dance for this news.

This morning Tom gifted me with three pages of ‘reasons, ways and whys’ he loves me.  Perhaps my best gift ever!  As I hugged him, I whispered, “I could write a book…for you.” If I can say one thing about Tom Suiter, for these times— I am overflowing with massive gratitude and appreciation for this man, this incredibly strong man, who keeps me balanced. And who loves me perfectly when I can’t dance.

The verse below shouts the wonderful ways in which we are to love in a marriage relationship. Even though I have not elaborated the topic, I want to use it here.  Ephesians 5: 33 in the Amplified Bible defines clearly how a wife is to love her husband. Husbands seem to have only one way… the more difficult one!

“Let each man of you without exception, love his wife as being in a sense his very own self; and let the wife see that she respects and reverences her husband—that she notices him, regards him, honors him, prefers him, venerates and esteems him, and that she defers to him, praises him, and loves and admires him exceedingly.”

Learning to love Tom Suiter as this verse instructs has kept me dancing these 58 years—

just not today.