profound — The Message — The Blue-Collar Bible Scholar

So, my wife and I were at our local hardware store the other night when the sales associate, an older man named John, came over to see if we were "finding everything okay?" I was busy agonizing over which drill bit to buy when she strikes up a conversation with him.

Now, my wife, Ebony, has always had this God given ability to open up complete strangers. She tells him that we've been married for 8 years and he kind of chuckles to himself, as if to say, "That's nothing." I know this because it's the same chuckle I get when someone proudly says they've been married for 6 months, or even a year.

Well, now we're curious. My wife then asks the obvious question, how long have you been married? John gets this blank look on his face while he does the math. Slowly and deliberately he says, "43 years." That's awesome, and my wife and I are quick to tell him so. That's such a long time to be married. It's less and less common for marriages to last that long these days. Here's the most interesting part: when Ebony asks about John's wife and what she's like, he gets silent and just looks.

He had no words. He had been married so long and loved her so much, he didn't have words to describe it. She was just his wife, that's all he could articulate. He then went on to explain that he couldn't even explain how or why they got married. "We just fit," John said, "We just seemed to go together and it felt right." I can only hope right now that one day I might experience a love for my wife so profound it very literally defies explanation.