It is our Silver Wedding today and we are having a quiet dinner together tonight. David’s elderly mother in England had a bad fall yesterday and is having surgery to repair her broken hip today. She broke her pelvis last year also but generally is a very determined feisty woman so we are hoping and praying that her strong will works in her favour now. It has created some issues over the years for me as her daughter in law but hope it will stand her in good stead now. I am concerned though as she apparently fretted for months after her fractured pelvis….lost many stones in weight. On the plus side she is now slimmer and fitter but with that comes fragility. Anyway….my thoughts and prayers are with her and Anne, David’s sister, and family who bear the brunt of this now.
David and I met at church within a year of becoming Christians. We were a little different in some respects as he was converted at a Pentecostal church and I with my Catholic roots was more into quiet awe and worship. Something I needed after years of being an athiest and also having just left a position with an enormously wealthy family for whom I had been a nanny for over two years. During that time the mother suicided and it became increasingly difficult to have any positive impact on the family. It was a difficult time and the church provided a much needed haven then.
The funny thing was I was not looking to meet anyone then and our friendship blossomed and grew, especially after David was hit by a car and hospitalised with no family here to rely on. After he recovered he then had to return to England in the spring after his work permit here ran out and after a few months I went over to England to attend a family wedding during the summer and also to see how our relationship might develop over there where his family and familiars were. We married in September of that year and after going through the migration procedure he migrated to Australia the next year. We brought our son Christopher home on our first wedding anniversary and have been very much a trio ever since. I have been amazed and astounded at my ability to defend and shelter and nurture my family and it has been a great privilege to do so. We have had a lot of challenges with ill health and life circumstances but we are closer because of it. Our relationship may seem strange to some as we do not go out a lot together but we spend a lot of time just being together at home as well as spending a lot of time separately on our own interests. By the way we asked our son to come to dinner with us tonight but he declined!
I took the photo above through the photo frame then I cropped the frame out, so am fairly chuffed with my new found editing skills. Woo hoo… who would have thought I would still be married twenty five years later and editing my own wedding photos….on a computer at that!!
Look how lovely and sparkly the two of you are! Such a romantic story… I love it when people fall in love without meaning to or expecting to. That is the same with my partner as we had been friends for a long time and he had watched me go through so many things, including a marriage to someone else!
I hope your mother-in-law is ok.
Kara
Happy anniversary!
It’s funny to look back, isn’t it? We had our silver anniversary in March this year, and in our wildest dreams we couldn’t imagine all the things that would have happened over those years.
Hope you MIL mends, it’s so hard when family is far away.
What a wonderful story you have. And congratulations on your anniversary! Very nice photo cropping. I am amazed at the new stuff I am learning every day while doing this blogging thing.
Congratulations — I hope a golden anniversary will find you just as happy having had many more wonderful experiences along the way.
Congratulations!
I pray for you both and for your dear mother in law.
Many blessings for the coming years!
Congratulations! I wish you had an amazing day.. so wonderfully nice… filled with all the memories such a special life brings and only the truest of happiness coming your way!
Congratulations! Wishing you many more happy happy years together.
Wow, Kathleen. Now I am even more in awe of you! Talented and you’ve learned the secret to having a happy married life. As you know I am not married. However, if I was I would want a married life just like you describe. I love being at home, however, I have so much I do, the person I meet has to have a strong sense of who he is and be independent; it not, it wouldn’t work. So I say Bravo! I wish I could insert a big You Go Girl whistle here! Love it. Here’s to 25 more years.
congratulations! cheers for many more!
I love the way the two of you are looking at each other in the picture! Congratulations indeed.
Thanks for stopping by my blog! I do indeed post to Flickr. If you look up Queen of Fifty Cents in the people tab you’ll find me. I usually post stuff to the Nifty Thrift group, but could certainly post to others as well. One of these days anyway…I’m a bit behind at the moment!
What a beautiful young couple y’all were. I love to hear of people staying together…so many don’t these days.
Again…happy belated anniversary!
Thank you everyone for your congratulations and best wishes. We had a really pleasant meal at an Italian place on the corner of our road actually…we are spoiled!
That photo is my favourite as we were so relieved it was all over and that was a minute of sheer delight!
Again thank you all dear friends it is wonderful to share this life journey with you. We are at the same stages some of us while others are at a different place in their lives but each is so very interesting and special to me.
May God bless you and may you have wonderful peace in your lives…..I am so filled with gratitude for you all.
Hi Kathleen,
It’s a little late but I just wanted to pass on my congratulations for your Silver Wedding anniversary. Looking at your last comment it looks like you had a wonderful time. Good on ya!
Hi, catching up on a few of your posts … I absolutely loved reading about how you met your husband – it’s a very encouraging story. I am the migrant in our family and it is hard sometimes. Thanks for sharing your story. Did you end up working out a happy medium between pentecostal and Catholic?
I’ve been trying to convince Peter that we need to go up to Canberra at he end of October – but he’s not convinced (yet?). If we do – I will let you know because I would love to meet you to see Gee’s Bend – is it still on in Sydney?
Happy Anniversary!
Thanks Robert and Jeana…David grew dissatisfied with the emotionalism of Pentecostalism and I was happy with the C of E but missed some of the awe of the Catholic Church. When we came back from living in England we ended up working for many years at a High Anglican…Episcopalian church which is a mix of both. Since leaving there though I have become a little anti established churches and more into spirituality ….Australia is such a multi cultural place and it is a wonderful mix of beliefs and worship styles.
I may upset some Christians but I have a problem with any form of fundamentalism and the total belief in there being only one way to believe. I have a lot of life experience and because of that I know that the path to God is not such a narrow one. I like the monks and saints writings of old who really searched and yearned for God….when we are so sure I feel we become very closed to things.
Hi Kathleen: I know it is late but I wanted to wish you a Happy Silver Anniversary along with everyone! : ) Such a nice milestone to reach, look back and see how many things you have passed through. Both happy and sad times…but that is life for us all. Please give each other many special hugs from me…all across the miles!!! : ) May you have many more years with more happiness than sadness and many blessings!!!
Hugs to you, Sunnie : )