Forty-Eight Years and Counting

By Debra DuPree Williams @DDuPreeWilliams

Yesterday, my husband and I celebrated our 48^th wedding anniversary. Last year, I wrote about our covenant marriage. I hope you’ll indulge me in that privilege again this year.

I can tell you, it’s a good thing that marriage vows are a covenant between the man, woman, and God. I’m sure we’re not the only couple who faced many challenges, including CoVid, during this past year. Add in the six months before our August anniversary last year, the beginning of CoVid, and we’ve faced obstacle after obstacle in the last eighteen months.

But God made all the difference in the outcome. Here is our story.

GOD ORDAINED

Our meeting one another was a God-ordained relationship from the very beginning.

J, that’s what I call my hubby, attended Samford University, a Baptist school, on the south side of Birmingham. I attended Birmingham-Southern, a Methodist college, on the west side of town. We were introduced by an old friend from my hometown who happened to be my hubby’s roommate.

Our first date was J coming to my campus to tour what was, back in the olden days, a new thing. Rather than just dorm rooms, our New Women’s Dorm was a group of dorm rooms centered around a large living/study area. We had semi-private baths rather than the standard grab-your-bucket-and-towel-down-the-hall-baths. There were four of these suites, each on a corner of each floor. It was innovative. Something to see.

After the grand tour, which was all of twenty minutes, I had to go to a rehearsal down the hill in the music building. Choir tour was coming up. I told J he had to leave, and he proclaimed he loved music and asked if he could go. I thought it rather odd. I mean, he didn’t know me or my friends and yet, he wanted to come to a rehearsal. Just weird to me.

But he tagged along.

GETTING TO KNOW YOU

After the rehearsal, we got to talking. He’d told me on the way down the hill about his love for music. He had a ministry with a friend where they went and sang in the local prisons or jails. He also informed me he had been the keyboardist in a rock band in high school. They called themselves The Backstreet Mailmen. I often tease him about being in the original Backstreet Boys.

We got to talking in the loggia (don’t you love that fancy word for lounging area?) and eventually made our way outside to the amphitheater which adjoined the music building. We sat and talked until after 2 a.m.  Some date, huh?

During that time, I learned that his mother had graduated from my high school in my little hometown. Amazing to both of us. He knew and was friends with people I went to school with. The cool kids, not part of my crowd. No one would ever consider me to be one of the cool kids.

We saw one another every night that week. Yes, he drove all the way over to my campus. We went to his university’s Step-Sing on the weekend. That weekend, just one week after our first date, we were engaged. Yes, fast, but hey—48 years!

Forty-Eight Years and Counting @DDuPreeWilliams #family #faith #writing Share on X

GENERATIONS OLD FAMILY TIES

Years later, after the birth of all four of our boys, I got very involved in genealogy. I’d dipped my toes but nothing like this. I discovered that our GGG grandfathers knew one another. That was crazy to me. God had a hand in bringing our two families together from long, long ago.

But isn’t that the way it is with all of us?

We’re told in Jeremiah 1:5 Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you (NASB). God knew both of us before we were born to our mothers. He knew all the things we would do in this life, the good and the bad. He knows our next thought, word, deed. He even knows the number of hairs on our heads.

He knew that J and I would be married one day. He was there the day we made the covenant with Him.

GOD IS FAITHFUL

God’s been with us through the happiest of times and through the most heartbreaking of times. But in all these times, He’s been faithful. He put us together and He’s kept us together by His grace and His love for us.

I am profoundly grateful for these 48 years. I’d not want to do life with anyone else.

Here’s to our next twenty or so years, Love.

Blessings, y’all.

Please share your experience of how you met if you are married. We’d love to hear your stories. How has God kept you together?

This is one of our favorite groups. We got to see them in person at The Cove a couple of years ago. Be blessed, y’all!!