Her handmade dress flowed for two steps down the front of the poured concrete stage of the new chapel, still being completed outside, but covered with sturdy indoor/outdoor green carpet to simulate the verdant grass which grows so prolifically in northern Michigan.

Our vows also handmade by the two of us, we reverently spoke each in soft tone, gazing into the eyes of the other across the step upon which we had stood just hours previous to this final pronouncement as man and wife.

We thought the love we had was all that we could or would, yet, as kids, we discovered that the cracks marriage allows upon two people tests the choices of each to remain faithful.

Here we were, just months from being teens, feeling as if the world were indeed our basket of cherries, we clung to one another, romantic and starry eyed. We didn't make it out of the driveway before the used car my missionary parents bequeathed us blew the engine and we had to borrow someone else's just to get to our cabin in the woods.

The cabin was quiet and comfortable. Our budget thinner than two dimes rubbed together, it seemed. The days of indolent relaxation were just too short as we headed south, now trying to maintain the commitment we'd made on that June afternoon.

Our love was tested by immaturity, a series of job failures, and honestly, our selfishness. I wanted this and that and we had no money for this and that, only the groceries on our table and the gas to get back and forth to the positions I found. Bitterness rose in my soul. Did she not realize I couldn't make it any faster? Resentment built a quivering frustration around my heart. The sweet woman at my side didn't falter, I did. My grip on good wavering as I perceived not the love with which she surrounded our tiny apartment, but my own lacks as a man. A very young man filled with overwhelming guilt and inadequacy.

One can make it on love, but that love has to be a choice when all else crumbles. We entered many times of testing over the years, from illness of our newborn son, to the last breaths of my wife as she lay struggling with cancer and infection. It isn't easy to see one's beloved dissolving under the evil which cancer brings on our families, nor the anger which is so easy to allow to reign in our trembling frames. Evil is ever present to swamp the good of God's promises and work in our hearts. Love must be sincere to survive the temptation to slide into the sleepy oblivion of self. Hating evil is hard when we feel assaulted by suffering.

Sincerely love. Good will accompany.