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A friend dragged me down to the basketball courts to meet “this guy.” When I saw him standing there with his clipboard, sunglasses, dark tan, and girls hanging around him, I thought, Great, another full-of-himself jock.
That night, though, we ended up in the same group at dinner. Afterward we spent most of the evening talking as we walked the boardwalk after the session. By the end of the week Keith believed God had told him I was the girl he would marry.
God had not told me any such thing.
I left that week thinking I’d probably never see him again, and honestly, I was fine with that.
One week later I was at a YFC meeting in Winchester when Keith walked in for a surprise visit. I wanted to hide. What was he thinking? He spent the weekend in town, and we got to know each other better. My family thought he was wonderful. I still wasn’t convinced.
Over the next six months he called, wrote letters, and yes, eventually I even wrote back. I visited him too. Somewhere along the way I realized he was becoming a dear friend.
In December of 1981 Keith showed up with a dozen roses and a ring. He proposed on Christmas Eve.
I felt terrible sending him home with that ring still in his pocket. He was crushed. He couldn’t understand why, because he was certain I was the one he was supposed to marry.
After that we stopped communicating. In fact, Keith didn’t hear from me again until June of 1982.
I knew he would be back at Breakaway, and there was something I needed him to hear from me directly. But I couldn’t bring myself to say it in person, so I wrote a letter and sent it with a friend.
Keith had hoped I might be there. Instead, all that arrived was my letter.
After Keith proposed and we stopped talking, I met someone else. I believed he was “the one.” Truthfully, he seemed more like the kind of man I thought I deserved.
Keith was good. He came from a Christian home. He was kind, pure, loving—the best man I had ever known. Deep down, I didn’t believe someone like him could truly love someone like me.
In the letter I tried as gently as possible to explain that not only had I met someone else, but I was pregnant.
But there is no gentle way to say something like that.
I was later told that after Keith read the letter, he sat and cried. He still believed I was the woman God had called him to marry, but now he wondered if he had heard God wrong. Maybe he had just imagined it all.
When he got home, he called me. We talked for hours. The baby’s father didn’t want to marry me and wanted me to have an abortion. Keith listened as I wrestled through my options. He walked me through the pros and cons of adoption, but I was deeply torn and unsure.
Throughout my pregnancy we stayed in touch.
Keith listened patiently when I called to say the baby’s father and I were getting back together and wanted to try again. A few weeks later he listened as I cried through another heartbreak.
And through all of it, he still loved me.
He prayed for me. He encouraged me. He stayed my friend. He became a steady source of kindness, love, and support during one of the most confusing seasons of my life.
On December 18, 1982, my son was born. When I got home from the hospital, I called Keith to tell him the news. I also told him we would soon be heading to Children's Hospital because my son had congestive heart failure caused by holes in his heart—VSD and ASD.
Those months were filled with hospital stays, medications, fear, and uncertainty. Through it all, Keith remained faithful. He continued to encourage me and carry me through the terrifying moments when I didn’t know if my baby would survive.
In May, when my son was five months old, Keith came to visit. We had been talking and writing steadily for nearly a year by then. He spent the weekend with my family and got to know my son.
We talked for hours.
The day after he returned home, he called and told me he still loved me—and that he had fallen in love with my son too.
After I hung up, I talked to my mom.
“I don’t love him,” I told her. “He’s my best friend, and I don’t want to lose that.”
My mother looked at me like I had lost my mind.
“You’d be foolish to let a man like that go,” she said. “Men like him don’t come along often.”
“But Mom, I don’t know if I love him.”
“Yes, you do,” she said. “You just don’t realize it yet.”
I thought about her words for days.
Part of me wondered if Keith might be my last hope. I prayed constantly, asking God for clarity. I wanted some kind of sign—something written plainly in front of me. Was Keith really the man I was supposed to marry? How could someone so good still want me after everything?
I couldn’t understand that kind of love. I wasn’t even sure I believed in it. And if it did exist, I certainly didn’t think it existed for someone like me.
About a month after Keith’s visit, I finally called and asked him if he still wanted to marry me.
He told me he’d give me an answer after he returned from vacation the following week.
The next morning he left for the beach with friends. On the drive there, he asked one of them to be his best man.
He didn’t need a week to think about it. He already knew.
What God had spoken to his heart two years earlier still hadn’t changed.
That week felt endless for me. What if he said no? What if I had waited too long? What if I had ruined everything?
I was young, confused, and still had very little understanding of who God truly was. I had become a believer in 1978, but I didn’t yet understand His love or His character. I was too young to be a mother and too immature to be a wife.
Yet even then, God was quietly working all things together for His glory.
When Keith returned home, he spoke with his father, who thought he was far too young to become a husband and father. Still, he told Keith that if this was truly what God wanted, they would support him.
Four months later, on November 26, 1983, we were married.
Yes, I married a man I wasn’t entirely sure I loved.
But he was my best friend.
I had put him through so much during those two years. Yet God used Keith’s love to slowly begin breaking down the walls around my heart. For years I had kept both people and God at a distance. As Keith often says, my walls were probably stronger than Fort Knox.
He was the only person I truly let in.
Even then, it would take years before I allowed him to see all the dark and hidden places in me.
Over time, God began bringing light and healing into those places. There was so much brokenness in my life that needed healing, and through it all Keith stayed beside me. He loved me, challenged me, encouraged me, and walked with me through places I never wanted to go.
God knew exactly the kind of man I would need. And despite all my resistance, He made sure I had him.
Through the years I have grown to love this man deeply. Looking back now, I think perhaps I always loved him, even if my understanding of love was immature and incomplete.
Because real love is not just emotion. It is choosing to stay. Choosing to fight for one another. Choosing to walk through hardship together until, over time, love deepens into something steadier, richer, and far more beautiful than young romance ever imagines.
When I tell our story, Keith sometimes says I make him sound perfect.
He isn’t.
God has shaped and softened him too over the years. He has had his own growing to do. But while he is not a perfect man, he has been perfectly suited for me.
And these last forty-three years of marriage have been good.
Wonderfully good.
Not perfect. But good..Today I am joining with the following link up! Feel free to check them out! Wedded Wednesday and Wifey Wednesday.
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