70 Years and Counting

This weekend I had the privilege of celebrating my paternal Grandparents’ 70th wedding anniversary with my family. Seventy years!? That is just plain hard for me to fathom. I mean, I clearly remember their 50th anniversary party. Which means I am old, and they are ancient. But I must say, those two old people LOVE each other. And it is beautiful to see. My grandparents have a great story, and I thought I’d let their son (and my favorite famous blog commenter), my Uncle Paul, tell it to you.

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On September 16, 1939, Charles Marvin Brads married Della Victoria Higgins in the parsonage of the Lexington Presbyterian Church in Lexington, VA. She was 20, he was 17

FDR was in the White House and Hitler had just started WWII in Europe. Through FDR, WWII, (Jenny’s note: during WWII, my Grandpa went to war in the Pacific, and my Grandma got a babysitter for her two kids and went to work in a gunpowder factory – a true “Rosie the Riveter” – a family in true service to their country!) the New Deal, Harry Truman, the Atom Bomb and devastation of Japan’s Hiroshima, Ike, Mamie, Pink, the Cold War, JFK, The Cuban Missle Crisis, LBJ, The Great Society, Social Unrest, Nixon, Watergate, Ford, Carter, The Iran Hostage Situation, The Reagan Revolution, Bush I and a thousand points of light, Bill Clinton, White House Scandal, Bush II, 9-11, and onto an Historic Election of the first President of African Descent, this marriage has lasted. Countries have come and gone, leaders of come and gone, even the Berlin Wall, came and went, but they still last. It ranges somewhere between a miracle and and Act of God. I’m going with the latter.

I never questioned the love of my parents for one another. Every morning before Daddy took us to school, he would look at Mother and say, “Brown Sugar, give this old boy a kiss he’ll remember all day long.” And she would. A sweet memory, one I cherish, and one that reassured me daily that I lived in a safe home where love abounded. I’m sure it wasn’t all a bed of roses, but I know that through drama, trauma, illness, heartbreak, and sometimes even anger, the love lasted and lasts.

Mother was a devoted mother, devoted wife, and devoted Christian. She did all in her power to show hundreds of people what true love was, in every form. Daddy, though more stern, and far more unbending, told me he loved me, something that fathers often have a hard time doing. And though I know both of them didn’t like me on occasion, I know they loved me and love me still.

It’s because they loved each other so, and knew that the five of us were the product of their love and that God had given each of us to them for a purpose.

They taught me the meaning of the word sacrifice. They taught me that though they had to learn to love each other and then fall in love with each other, they loved me before I was born.

Daddy told me once that my name, Paul David came to him the night before I was born when he was reading the Apostle Paul’s writings where he quoted King David when David was talking about justification. He said, “I got the idea for your name, and Mother agreed from reading Paul’s quoatation of David in Romans, Chapter 4 Vs 6-8. He was quoting Psalm 32:1-2. (God imputed righteousness, We didn’t earn it, He forgave our iniquities, He covered our sins with he blood of Christ, And the Lord will not in the future tense, impute sin. Our sins may get us into lot of trouble here and every act, thought and deed has it’s own built in consequence, but they will never be on our account in heaven.)”

This is the home in which we grew up. This is the love we saw, and this is the love we learned.

It’s no fluke that your Mother and Father have been married for 41 years, or Diane and I for 32. We had great examples.

Five children, eight grand children, and 14 great grandchildren later, they still love each other. And they love all of us.

It’s a good thing!

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It’s a great thing. I am so blessed to be part of this family. We’ve had good times and bad times just like every family, but there’s always been a lot of LOVE.