Becoming Us - A Survival Story
I didn't have a lot of girlfriends growing up. At least not one at a time. I mostly hung out with groups of friends. Sometimes I was the only guy in a group of friends, and they were all girls who were friends. I did have the occasional date, but not until my senior year in high school did I have a steady girlfriend. When I left for college we mutually decided not to continue the relationship.
After my first year of college, I came home for the summer and my parents, who pastored First Assembly of God, Minden, Louisiana, conducted a Kid's Crusade in Haynesville, about thirty miles away. Naturally I wanted to be involved. As we arrived at the church, I didn't know that two friends had heard the evangelist had a teenage son, and they decided to stalk me. They were sitting at the piano on the stage and the plan was to hide when we arrived. We pulled in ahead of schedule and I was the first to walk in the side door, right by the piano. It caught Terri and Donna by surprise and they shrieked and bolted from their perch, down the aisle and out the back door. That was my first look and impression of the person I would spend the rest of my life with.
Terri had volunteered to work at the registration table, and for some reason I felt compelled to hang out around the table. We talked and maybe flirted a little. Terri's friend, Donna, was there too, so I needed some help. The next night and each after, I brought my friend, Shane, with me so it would even the field. Of course I brought my own car on subsequent nights so I could stay as long as I wanted. One night we went driving after the services, Donna was up front with me and Terri was in the back seat with Shane. We drove for a while, then came back to the church where everyone had gone. It seemed a good idea to take a walk. We started walking, and in a natural, or maybe supernatural, split, Shane and Donna walked on ahead and Terri and I became a permanent pair. We loved each others company, though we were not much alike. I was outgoing and bold, she was quiet and shy. I was confident, she was unsure of herself. My family background was stable and secure, her's had been rocky. What we did share is a love for one another's company. She went the very first night and told her mother she was going to marry me. I wasn't thinking that far ahead.
As I entered my second year of college, my dad resigned his pastorate and the family moved into a different house in Minden. I left school after just 3 semesters and landed a job at a convenience store while living with my folks. Driving the thirty miles to see Terri was a regular occurrence. My parents unexpectedly bought a house in Haynesville, which made dating much easier. We began attending Haynesville First Assembly of God where Terri's family went to church. After only a couple of months the pastor asked me to take over as youth pastor, thus launching a life of ministry. Technically, Terri, then, was in my youth group. Most would discourage a young youth pastor from dating someone in the youth group, but I was nineteen and she was almost seventeen, and we had already dating before the assignment.
After a short time we would have the first test of our relational resolve. The pastor of the church made some serious errors and was removed from the church by the district. He took a loyal handful of the congregants and started a new church down the road. Terri's stepdad was one of those loyal to the pastor and took his family to the new church. Terri was not on board with the migration, but, "...as long as you live under my roof..." was the argument against her. So Terri moved out of the house and moved in with her grandmother for a week until her parents conceded and consented to let her continue to go to First Assembly. I remember on a visit to the house during that time, her stepdad took me to the back room to negotiate the terms of our dating and taking her to a different church than the family's choice.
It wasn't long before the new church closed its doors. Terri's parents decided to move away from Haynesville, to a community called Holly Ridge and attend church there. Not wanting to be separated she arranged to occupy one side of a duplex the church owned, which was next door to the church. Her rent was to clean the church. What a great deal!
Altogether we dated for three years, and on April 1, 1987, I asked Terri to marry me. Yes, on April fools day! That way, if it didn't go well I could just announce, "April fool!" I was nearing the end of school, attending a vocational school for industrial instrumentation. Our "summer break" was the first three weeks of August, so we set the wedding date at the beginning of the three weeks off, August 1st.
The week arrived, and we had no idea it would be so eventful. We didn't have any budget to work with on either side of the family, so we decorated with items the church had on hand, or borrowed from friends. The apartment Terri lived in was tiny, so in order to move me in we had to shuffle some of her things out. We loaded up my dad's pickup and drove a load out to her parent's house in Holly Springs. On the way home, around midnight, the truck ran out of gas. The gas gauge didn't work, so it was unexpected. We had to hitch a ride into town, get a gas can, and rescue the truck.
Then the Friday morning before the wedding, we received the news my dad had fallen off a two story house at a construction site. He was taken to the hospital in Minden with fractured ribs, broken pelvis and a host of other injuries. We rushed to the Minden hospital and saw him as the were treating his injuries. He was conscious and motioned for me to come close. He told me to get his keys, go to the job site and take his truck home. He whispered, "It has enough gas to get home." Or so I thought. He really said, "It has enough gas to get to Homer." Between Homer and Haynesville I ran out of gas. I had to walk somewhere and call someone (no cell phones in 1987) to bring some gas. Family had been arriving from all over for the wedding, so it was decided the 1:00 pm Saturday wedding would continue as per his wishes. Even though he was scheduled for surgery at the same time. We continued preperation for the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner when we received a call that my best man's dad had a heart attack and he would be unable to attend the rehearsal. My dad was officiating the wedding, so we also had to arrange for the pastor of our church to perform the ceremony.
Wedding day came, August 1, 1987. The party was dressed and ready. We had involved my youth group members in different roles for the wedding and reception. Terri and I had recorded us singing a song that would play for the wedding party to walk down the Aisle. On a single tape I recorded some pre-wedding music timed to the second. When started on time, the song we sang would start right at 1:00. Well, the person on sound didn't start the tape on time, and the lady directing the procession was a stickler for punctuality so she advanced the party promptly at 1:00, entirely missing the intended march song. I was behind my side door saying, "Wrong song! Wrong song!" When everyone was in place I sang Enough for Me by Leslie Phillips as Terri walked down the aisle. The gravity of the moment was overwhelming for the room. Terri was the church sweetheart, marrying the youth pastor while his father was in surgery at the exact time of the wedding. Tears were flowing, both of joy and heaviness for the situation. Everyone could feel the intensity of the moment.
Part of the ceremony involved the unity candle. Terri's parents lit a candle and gave their blessing over the union. My mom lit a candle and spoke on behalf of her and my dad. The whole room was bawling. After Terri and I took those two candles and lit ours, we went back to stand in the center for the vows. I looked around and the unity candle was dwindling, about to go out. On the wedding video you can see me give that candle a stare, mentally saying, "You better not go out!" The flame of the candle immediately grew to full measure as if it dare not cross me, not on that day. Terri and I had written our own vows, but apparently not to the approval of the minister who ad libbed things he thought we left out.
Then came the reception. The plan was to greet the guests, exchange the cake bites and rush to the hospital where my dad would be coming out of surgery. As we stood in the greeting line, one of our youth group servers had a seizure and fell into the table knocking over the five tier cake. The girls brother got embarrassed and took off running down the road. We now had a medical and youth crisis. As some cared for the girl, I sent my best man after the brother to let him know everything is ok.
When things calmed down we exchanged some salvaged bites of cake and retreated to change into our riding clothes. As we came down the stairs, the groom party thought it would be fun to kidnap the bride and run off with her. As they carried Terri out of sight, I grabbed my best man and told him, "We don't have time for this!" He retrieved my bride so we could get on the road. Our car was decorated and ready to go. We dashed through the spray of rice and sped off with cans in tow. We stopped at a car wash to spray off the mounds of shaving cream to find they had used menthol shaving cream to write "Just Married" on the trunk, which took the paint off, so we had the announcement permanently engraved.
We arrived at the hospital just as they finished the surgery. They escorted us to the room where they were wheeling him and as he entered the room we approached the bed, he opened his eyes and frailly said, "Hello Mr. and Mrs. Alexis." Those words were music to our ears, knowing he was going to be ok and that he was pleased to know we were wed.
Our honeymoon consisted of a few days in Dallas, and then the remainder of the week in DeLeon, Texas, where my grandparents lived. It was a small farming town of about 2000. We arrived and settled into bed after a long drive. In the middle of the night the power goes off. Soon after a sheriff knocked on the door to inform us of an evacuation. A feed store had caught on fire about half a mile away and in this warehouse were a store of "agent orange" containers. The town of DeLeon had to be evacuated to a nearby town. My grandfather exclaimed, "I've never been asked to leave my town in all my life!" I respond, "I'm sorry. It's probably our fault." We made it through the ordeal just fine and made it all the way back to our now joint apartment in Haynesville. We had no food, so while I unpacked the car, Terri took my Ford Maverick to town to get some groceries. On the way back she was pulled over by the police because my tags had expired. When the poor unsuspecting officer approached the car Terri was crying and unloaded the whole story on him. He graciously waved her home with grace and a suggestion to take care of the registration.
often joke that our marriage is so successful because it started off so hard. As if we got the difficulties out of the way in the first two weeks. In fact, we have had many other difficult, trying times in our long marriage, but our resolve is the same through it all just as it was from the start.