Seventeen years ago today I got engaged. 17! It was the Pastor’s birthday so of course I had no suspicion because who does something besides bask in the celebration of themselves on their birthday? We were in the mountains of Idaho on vacation. He proposed on the beach. There were lots of tears. Finally, we went to the local gas station and used a pay phone to call my parents.
Seriously! A pay phone…at a gas station. My kids don’t even know what a pay phone is!
Less than a year later we were married. I was in medical school and the Pastor was finishing his undergrad degree. We lived off 99cent frozen pizza and 49cent cornbread from a box. We took almost all of our cash from wedding gifts and went out and purchased the most amazing piece of technology known to us at the time. A DVD player. We are talking HUNDREDS of dollars. It was enough that we had to save up again to rent DVDs to watch on it. Well, within the last year we needed to purchase a new DVD player. So, of course, I went to my best buddy Amazon.com.
Guys…you can buy a DVD player on Amazon.com for $25 and get it at your house in 2 days. 2 days!
Fast forward 12 more years and it’s the Pastor’s birthday again. I’m 38 plus weeks pregnant with baby #2. The baby spent 3 years in the making and the one who seems larger than life when just a week earlier our state had the hottest day since 1936. ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTEEN degrees, people. So, I send him off to have a great day with friends while I take big sister to school and then am off to work. Only baby BK decides it’s her day to come. Despite my insistence at my coworkers (read: screaming) that I was not going into labor, it was happening. When my first child was born I didn’t even have a Facebook account! 6 months after my second child was born she was the subject of my first Instagram post.
Imagine a world with no FB and no Insta…that same world had pay phones at gas stations and $250 DVD players.
In the last 17 years we have seen many changes. Most of them for the better. But some
things stay the same. Kids still love their birthdays and daddy is a five and ten year old’s best friend. For 17 years the Pastor has put our family and his church above his own interests. For 17 years the Pastor has created space for friendship and hospitality better than anyone I know. So, on this day, we celebrate the Pastor and my favorite 5 year old. This day we reflect on what it means to live in a rapidly changing world while finding time to celebrate the things that never change.
Gynecology & Theology 