For better or worse, In sickness and health....

What's love got to do, got to do, with it? What's love, but a second hand emotion. I love me some Tina Turner. But she was flat wrong on this one. Love has everything to do with making a marriage last. Celebrating my 10 year anniversary today is proof of that. These 10 years with my husband have been the best of times and the worst of times. But mostly the best. We celebrated the true unity of his children and me with our marriage in 2005.

Then we grieved pure loss of his job at Wilkes Tool and everything we had worked so hard for. We celebrated God opening that door of loss to show him that he should go back to school and become a barber. We honored God's vision and he went back to school. It was so difficult that most people don't know we had to live separately for a while to even make ends meet. (No folks, we weren't separated, his parent's home and my grandparent's home couldn't accommodate us all). We saw each other most evenings after work and spent the weekends together. Divorce was never an option for us. When we said our vows, we said "For better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health". We didn't say "Only for better until it gets hard, only while we have a lot of money, and only while we're both healthy". Living separately only lasted about a month until we could get some debts paid off and find a place we could all move into. Jerry completed barber school and worked in Lenoir for a year. Then came time to take another leap of faith with God's guidance and open Hud's Barber Shop. God always provides when you follow his direction and give him the glory. We took foster parent classes soon after and made the decision to adopt. Again seeking God with this decision. My job at Wachovia closed and I became a stay at home mother to our beautiful foster children and God paved the way. Fast forward to 2015 Jerry's business is booming, we have adopted three beautiful children, our other two  gorgeous children are grown, we are stronger than ever in our faith, our marriage has God at the head of it and divorce never was even in the hard times and never will be an option for us. Love is a feeling but it is more a decision. You decide to love. There are days I don't feel like getting up but I do. There are days I get up and I don't feel like "feeling" but I decide to. I'm not saying we have it all figured out, and we certainly aren't perfect, but we haven't had the easiest road and we've made it. If more people would decide to love and decide to stay committed, their outcome might be a little different too.