We are heading home tomorrow on Alaska Airlines, and Patty is picking us up at the airport in Portland at 7:30 pm. I have been in Alaska fishing for almost a month. Patty let’s me do it because she has all those grandkids to keep her busy, but I sure get to missing her. I am going back up to Alaska a week after I get home to go on a caribou hunting trip with two sons-in-law, but she is coming with me. Patty won’t go out in the bush hunting with us, she will stay at our daughter, Shelly’s house in Fairbanks with their six kids, yep Patty and the grandkids.

Over the last 53 years of marriage I have been gone off and on quite a bit. I used to travel a bunch for speaking engagements and then lots of mission trips around the world, and then month long bicycle trips, and hunting and fishing trips. Neither of us has struggled much with the separations, not because we don’t enjoy each others company or we don’t miss each other, because we do, it has just been part of our life and neither of us fusses much about what life dishes out for us, that’s just the way it is.

When Patty picks us up at the airport she will greet me and talk to me like we had dinner together today. For 53 years we have operated by a number of key principles in our relationship and marriage, none of them are written down, and if someone were to ask us what they were we would both be hard pressed to express them clearly, but we understand them and live by them consistently. The result has been 53 years of a great marriage and a very healthy and secure family life resulting in good kids and grandkids.

One of those principles is that the Lord is first place in our lives, nothing is more important to us than He is, not even our spouse or our kids. The Lord is our primary source of our security and joy in life, more than anything or anybody. Jesus said in

Luke 14:26 If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple.

The word hate here has the idea of love less to the point of being like hate because of the great difference. The love that I have for Patty is great but in comparison to my love for Jesus it is like hate. That entire concept is tough to live and almost impossible to measure. Regular separations are a good time to think about this, evaluate it, and make adjustments if needed.

God has stated clearly that He will not tolerate being second place in our life if we want to serve Him and have a relationship with Him. If we diligently seek Him first He will make all the other important things in our life amazing, especially our marriage and family.

God asked Abraham to offer up his only son, Isaac, as an offering to God. why? He wanted to see what was most important to Abraham, the Lord or his son. And because Abraham was willing to kill his only son, God blessed Him immensely.