Surprise fulfills dream after 30 years of marriage

ur four grown kids’ orders were strict.

“Beat it. Leave town. Get a room. Whatever. For 24 hours.”

And, so, there Bill and I sat, the day before our 30th wedding anniversary. On the banks of the Coeur d’Alene River, in front of the new motor home we’d bought the day before – an appropriately grand gift to ourselves to commemorate the passing of three decades together.

Over a bottle of wine, we toasted the fruit of those 30 years of turmoil and triumph: our daughter and three sons, ages 21 to 29, their various mates and our new grandson – all of whom we adored, and who we suspected were either painting our house or, at the very best, inviting a few friends in for a modest anniversary celebration.

The former was what we were betting on; our home needed staining and they knew it’d be hard for us. The latter, we deemed, was a long shot. Our kids, after all, led busy lives – usually to the point of not even remembering that this date was an annual reminder that they were the rare ones in their peer groups whose parents were still actually married to each other.

We also tipped the glass to a well-timed phone call from my agent (surreally received via cell phone on that same riverbank) informing me she’d just sold my first book, “Hot Flashes From Heaven,” to a publisher. No matter what was happening at home, the weekend was already magical.

It was about to get even more so.

My husband looked me in the eyes with the same look that had stolen my heart three decades ago.

“So … knowing all the good, the bad and the ugly,” he paused shyly, “would you do it all over again? If you could turn back the clock, knowing what you know now, would you still have said yes?”

I knew all that that question implied. We’d had a less than stellar beginning.

“We’re getting married on Friday,” my husband-to-be had said nonchalantly that Sunday in 1976. “Bring your clothes and come.”

As if that weren’t romantic enough, he added the capper to his, ahem, proposal: “Oh, and if you want to, pick up a box of doughnuts on the way.”

That should have served notice that life with this man would probably not read like a Danielle Steel romance novel. The fact that I didn’t hear from him for the next five days should have clinched it. But it didn’t. I was 25 and crazy in love with this man of few words.

And so I arrived at a pastor-friend’s house, five days later, hoping Bill hadn’t forgotten the day. I was wearing a new T-shirt I’d bought on sale (hey, it did have lace on it and it was ivory!) and an also marked-down, multicolored skirt. My dowry was a box of fresh doughnuts.

In less time than it took to make his proposal, we said quick vows that included only one word that Bill and I remembered over all the years to follow: “commitment.”

It was that word that resonated in me there on the riverbank as I pondered my husband’s question.

I doubt that any couple, in 30 years of marriage, doesn’t at least once consider throwing in the towel on that word.

But the most important thing remained: Neither of us had ever done so at exactly the same time.

The Bible puts it this way in Ecclesiastes: “Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work: If one falls down, his friend can help him up … though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.”

Over the years we’d come to realize the wisdom in looking at marriage as a cord of three strands.

We’d each helped the other up. Many times. When I’d been tempted to jump ship, it was Bill who’d cajole me back up the gangplank. When Bill had been tempted to hole up in a proverbial cave, I’d lure him out.

When both of us were near falling, that third strand – a commitment to a God that we took very seriously – held firm. Without it, and Him, our rope would have surely unraveled.

I stared back into Bill’s searching eyes. My own teared up.

“Yes,” I replied. “Yes, I’d do it all over again.”

Little did we know how prophetic that interchange would be.

The next morning we arrived at our oldest son’s rural home – just down the road from our own – at the time our kids had instructed.

One after another, they all marched into our motor home. I smiled at the sight of our progeny and their mates who were now the legacy of that cord of three strands. As I did, I said a silent prayer that someday, they, too, would celebrate decades-long marriages to the same person.

My daughter, Libby, a commercial banker from Medford, Ore., handed us an envelope addressed to her father and me. Scratch the idea that our house has just been painted, I chuckled to myself, as I opened an invitation decorated with my trademark color and vehicle, a purple Harley-Davidson. Must be a party, I reasoned silently.

“The Snyder children joyfully invite you to join them …” I read aloud and then sucked in a deep breath of air.

I looked up questioningly. Could it possibly be, I thought to myself?

I didn’t dare hope. No way, I reasoned. No way would they know. No way would they care that perhaps one of my deepest regrets in my marriage was that we hadn’t started it with a ceremony that was more befitting what would be a lifetime commitment to the word “commitment.”

No way could they understand how embarrassed I was of that skirt and T-shirt so many years ago, that blasted box of doughnuts. Over the decades I’d tried to hide it from my kids and focus on the fact that it’s not how a marriage begins that’s important. It’s how it ends – or doesn’t end.

I continued reading aloud. “… to witness the second wedding of their parents.”

Oprah calls it the “ugly cry.” You know the kind – where your face gets all red and puffy and there’s nothing pretty about it?

I was there. In the full-blown ugly cry. My husband’s eyes were flooding also.

Our kids had little time for sympathy. They were on a schedule. The wedding would start in six hours.

“Dad, you go with the guys,” barked my take-charge daughter.

I bawled even more. I knew that had to mean I would finally get to see my handsome husband in a tuxedo on his wedding day.

“Mom, you’re going with the girls.”

The ugly cry morphed into slobbery sobs. This could only mean one thing: a dress. A wedding dress. Finally a real wedding dress for me.

I had no idea there would be so much more.

Turns out Libby had had her own wedding gown cleaned and waiting, with appropriate jewelry, veil, tiara, long gloves, shoes – even a purple garter – at my mother’s Spokane Valley home.

I’d bought that dress for her less than four years before. At the time I’d vicariously thought it the most beautiful dress in the world and promised myself there would be nothing close to a T-shirt and skirt and box of doughnuts for my baby girl on her big day.

The dress fit me like Cinderella’s slipper.

As my daughter lovingly adjusted my veil, I looked in mom’s mirror. An ugly cry more powerful than Manito Park’s entire sprinkler system erupted.

We returned to the motor home that someone had moved behind our house, up where I couldn’t see anything that was going on below. Libby put the final touches on my hair and makeup, repairing damage caused by multiple ugly-cries.

At 6:30 p.m., my oldest son, Justus, loaded me, in full bridal attire, into the bucket of a brand new tractor (borrowed from a local dealer-friend). He handed me a purple bouquet. Below us at the house I could hear the tune “She Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy” start up. It was a song I knew my farmer-type husband would smile over.

After 30 years, my pumpkin has finally turned into a carriage, I grinned to myself.

As we entered the yard, I glimpsed Wedding Central for the first time. In less than 24 hours my children (and a slew of loved ones) had pulled off the whole shebang: dance floor, DJ, photographer, white lights everywhere, tables with white linens, huge buffet dinner, chairs lining the bridal aisle, 100 or more guests (my daughter had stolen our e-mail and address books), wedding archway, pastor, seven groomsmen and seven bridesmaids (two of whom I’d served as bridesmaid in their own weddings some 36 years ago), my grandson as ringbearer, and, most importantly, the groom-to-die-for – my husband, looking more handsome than I ever remember, in a tuxedo.

My girlfriend, Kathi Jingling, Women’s Pastor at Life Center Church, headed up the “re-nuptials.” She spoke eloquently about what this passage of time represents in this day and age, and what it means to those of us in midlife who’ve stuck it out with the same spouse in that three-strand cord of hope.

But it was my oldest son, Justus, who brought the audience to tears as Kathi handed him the microphone.

Justus is a cowboy. The real deal. He graduated from college on a rodeo scholarship and still team ropes. And he embodies the archaic slogan, “Real cowboys don’t cry.”

But when he took the microphone, his brimming eyes told me he now embraced the fact that “real men do.” With his younger brothers, Simeon and Shiloh, standing beside him, he passionately spoke about the value of a person’s word, how it seems so out of vogue in our culture today.

“But, 30 years ago,” he continued, “my parents gave their word to each other. They made a commitment and stuck to it.”

I smiled at the thought of all the temptations we’d dodged to keep that word. And how, in retrospect, our children had truly appreciated that three-strand cord they’d so often seemed oblivious to.

With my arm wrapped around my husband’s, we surveyed the reward: our children lined up as bridesmaids and groomsmen; our yard overflowing with well-wishers.

As we listened to our son thank us for never giving up, a “hot flash from heaven” drifted into my thoughts as delicately as the doves our children released into the air when Kathi next proclaimed, “You may now kiss the bride.”

Minutes later I shared it with the crowd as my husband and I prepared to cut into our three-tiered, purple-embellished wedding cake. Beside the cake, one of our guests – who’d known the story of our paltry beginnings – had artfully arranged a three-tiered pile of doughnuts.

I reached for a nearby microphone.

“Many of you don’t know why our children chose to surprise us with this lavish ceremony,” I said as I described that wedding-on-the-fly so long ago. The crowd chuckled when they heard the doughnut part of the story, but then they sobered as I shared the hot flash of insight I’d just received.

“A question came to me,” I explained. “You can call it from God – or just my vivid imagination – but I swear I heard a voice ask me, ‘So, Ronna, if you could have had the perfect wedding 30 years ago – or this blessed surprise, with all your grown children gathered around you to revel in it with you – what would you pick?’

“I didn’t have to think twice to answer,” I said as I looked into the glowing faces of friends and family. ” ‘No doubt about it, Lord, I’d have picked this.’ “

I waved my hand over all that our children had done in 24 hours.

With that, I opted not to feed my groom that traditional first slice of cake. Instead I reached for a doughnut and, in unison, we both bit into it together as cameras flashed, capturing the moment forever.

I’ve decided that, after 30 years, I rather like doughnuts.