Mary and I recently achieved a milestone – our 50th wedding anniversary. Our daughter and son-in-law hosted a party to celebrate the occasion and presented us with a photo album documenting our lives together over these 50 years. Looking back over those photos and remembering the adventures that we have shared reminds me of the ways in which God has used our marriage to transform both of our lives.

Mary was not a Christian when we met and married, and I was a very poor excuse for one. Although I was raised in the church and had accepted Christ as my Savior when I was about 11 years old, I had stopped attending when I left home for college and had no thought of returning. God, however, had other plans. Mary’s family had not attended church and she was very skeptical of Christianity. But then she met a young lady who worked with Campus Crusade for Christ at Arlington State University (now the University of Texas at Arlington) and began a months-long conversation that culminated when she, too, accepted Christ as her Savior. At her request we began attending church and the real adventure of our lives began.

I had pretty well planned out my life by the time I graduated from high school, leaving God out of the equation. I wanted to have a career in the aerospace industry, marry a beautiful woman, raise a family and live happily ever after. I made a good start of it, convincing Mary to become my wife, earning a bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering, going to work at LTV Aerospace Corporation and starting a family. But God began to alter my plans once Mary became a Christian and we started attending church together.

We began to meet people who had a real joy and vitality in their lives and discovered that it was due to the ways in which God was working in them to accomplish his purposes for them. In due course we did what they had done, committing ourselves to Jesus Christ as Lord of our lives, as well as our Savior, and beginning to seek God’s will for us. And that is when he began to transform us and alter the direction of our lives.

We began to feel God’s call to follow his plan for us, rather than our own plans. In the process, we found that his plan was much more exciting and rewarding than what we had imagined for ourselves. He made it clear that he had work for both of us to do, and that we would travel a path of his choosing together. Following that path has led to a voyage of discovery that has taken us places we never expected to go and given us the opportunity to  do things that have far exceeded what we dreamed of when we began our life together. I have had successful careers in three different industries, while Mary has had a lengthy career as a university professor. We have visited all 50 of the United States, living at times in 3 of them, and have traveled to more than 60 foreign countries.

Our marriage has proven to be a partnership that has provided the support and encouragement for both of us to accomplish much more than we would have been able to on our own. We have experienced many joys and sorrows together, and our lives are much richer for having shared them. God has used our marriage to transform both of us in ways that have grown and strengthened us, and has taught us that, with God’s help, we are capable of doing anything that he asks us to do. We look forward to seeing what God has in store for us to experience next.