Pastor Mike has been preaching on the family and the last couple of weeks his sermons have been on marriage. That is what prompted me to write these last several blogs as a complement to the information taught on weekends. Another reason that I decided to write these even though most have already heard the stories I used, is because 1 Peter 3 teaches that husbands are to honor their wives, so I decided to write something about marriage and to write it in such a way as to honor Patty.

The fourth quality I was looking for was a woman who understood and was comfortable with the roles of husbands and wives as described in the Bible. A vital part of that was that she would be submissive to me as her husband. My definition and mental image of how that would work was almost totally defined by what I had grown up with and witnessed between my Dad and Mom.

Sometime during my Junior year in High School, our church had a visiting missionary, and he spoke on marriage. The only thing that I remember him saying that has stuck in my mind all these years was, “the perfect illustration of a relationship that was based on authority and submission was Jesus Christ and God the Father.” He went on to say, ”Jesus was God, equal with the Father. Jesus was all-powerful, all-wise, but He was submissive to the Father in everything.” The purpose of the authority and submission in the Trinity was to facilitate unity; even in a perfect, sinless relationship authority and submission were required for the sake of unity.

Once we started dating regularly we saw each other and spent time together almost every day, and it wasn’t very long before I recognized that we got along quite well. In our conversations, our walks, and various activities Patty had a natural and gracious way of practicing deference toward me that made me feel like a king, and made her very attractive to me.

I was on the school baseball and basketball team, and in both sports we practiced during the regular dinner time in the cafeteria and ate after everybody else was gone. The people who worked in the kitchen would put food on those big metal dishes with multiple divided off areas, one per guy, and then put them in the oven to keep them warm for us. Patty worked in the kitchen as part of her school financial aid program, and she was often working when we came in to eat. All the guys got their own platter of food out of the oven and sat down, but when Patty was working she would bring mine out to me. The guys started giving me such a hard time about it that she began to bring everyone’s out. Once she figured out our schedule she would have them all set out on the table waiting for us when we walked in.

It didn’t take me very long to decide that I wanted to marry her.