LOVE WORTH FIGHTING FOR

Love Worth Fighting For

Thirty-two years ago today a twenty-year-old High School dropout cowboy with no plans for life, a hunger for truth, and an aversion for self-destruction, married a nineteen-year-old shy cowgirl who had been swept off her feet. She was toughened by life, feared know one or know thing, and knew exactly what she wanted, a ranch, cows, horses, and any other stray that wandered in. Her wedding dress cost $36 at a local discount boutique, it wasn’t a formal wedding dress but at least it was white, her ring had been purchased on credit and cost more than the entire honeymoon and wedding combined. The little Church in Central Valley was pastored by a friend and the piano player was borrowed from another Church. You could cut the tension with a knife that day as for the first time ever both sets of divorced parents now remarried were all in the same room, yes it was more than slightly awkward. The groom cried so hard he couldn’t be understood and the bride let go with a nervous laugh, (or so she said). Their honeymoon was three days of travel up the coast on a shoestring budget of $280 all provided by the generosity of others.
While this marriage began in the midst of struggle and poverty there was something here rarely found in marriages today, a deep commitment to succeed. Dawn and I both came form broken homes, we knew first hand the pain, frustration, fear, awkwardness, shame, and so many more of the negative consequences of divorce. That in itself was enough to get us through the early years but thankfully it was not all of the help we received. One year after our marriage Dawn and I met the Lord at Little Country Church and with His help there was hope. Each day we would remind ourselves in our own way of our need to succeed. Some days we wanted to give up and walk away, on others we never wanted it to end, and sometimes we were just going through the motions. You see no matter how deep your love the world does all it can to destroy every marriage. We laughed, we cried, we argued, we made up, we traveled together, we worked together and we served the Lord together. We found purpose, we found wealth, (not financial far better), we found love, and we found life, and all of it in Christ side by side.
We were blessed with three wonderful girls each different and unique and each one adding to our understanding of God’s love for us. Just looking at those girls we were reminded daily how important our marriage was, how deep God’s love was for us, and we saw the product of our love everyday. When I look upon our daughters and granddaughters today I see the product of love, I see the treasure of trials, I see the preciousness in perseverance, and the reward for the resistance to flee, I see life! To see them without the scars of divorce is the second greatest reward any man could ever ask for, and I pray that they will pass that gift on to their children. The greatest reward of course is a love for God, recognition of Jesus as savior and a commitment to truth.
When I took those vows on December 9th 1978 I never imagined that I would have to live the out in every way, never could I have imagined in sickness and in health would end in sickness. Once Dawn was diagnosed she had already begun to lose many of her abilities to function and for five months we saw a steady decline until her ultimate passing. In that time I was able to learn more about love than I could ever have imagined. There was never a regret for serving Dawn during this time, it was an honor one that comes with being a spouse. You see we fought for our marriage until her last breath, we fought because we had hope, we fought because we promised to do so, and we fought for all the same reasons then as we had for the previous decades. We fought for our marriage because every marriage is worth fighting for; love comes at a cost, a cost worth paying no matter the toll. I will never regret one ounce of effort that I gave toward making our marriage work, as a matter of fact I would give anything to have the pleasure of working for it today. Spend the time, make the effort, in the end there will be no regrets, take it from one who knows first hand.
Gene Burroughs