A Single Decision...A Lifetime of Reward

 

     A few years ago, on one of my music CDs, I recorded my version of a Frank Sinatra ballad, “September of my Year.”  It was an acknowledgement that I was rapidly becoming a genuine senior citizen and was beginning to look back instead of looking forward.  Today, I guess if I were to record the same song, I would have to entitle it “Christmas Season of my Year” since at the age of eighty-two I have become acutely aware of my mortality.  The difficulty in looking back is sometimes we become more aware of our past mistakes than we do of our accomplishments.

    I have had a good life; I was born into a solid, close-knit family which offered the security and comfort that children of today so seldom experience.  My parents were church-going people, and we children learned early on the importance of establishing a personal relationship with God.  That relationship has sustained me through more than one crisis in my life, and the eternal rewards of a relationship with our Creator cannot be overestimated.

    It is in life decisions…those decisions which affect the quality of our lifetimes and yet not have a spiritual context…which sometimes become the tipping point toward happiness or strife.  Over a period of nearly 70 years (since my early teens) I have made dozens of decisions, many of which I made on impulse…decisions made in an instant which have had lifetime implications.  This little essay, however, is not a review of my brilliant or dumb decisions.  It is an acknowledgement of the one event (other than my eternal relationship to God) which has made my life a testament of happiness and accomplishment.

    By the time I was ten years old, my parents had joined the Pentecostal church in Baytown, Texas, and were living solid Christian lives.  As a youngster, my main reason for attending church was to see my friends there and create some sort of fun activity.  However, there was this girl…. her name was Shirley Creel, the daughter of the assistant pastor, who somehow kept capturing my attention, and, though I was not particularly interested in girls in general, somehow, she managed to sneak into my thoughts on a somewhat regular basis.  But we were just kids, and the association was more on-again/off-again than anything serious.  (How serious can you get at ten years of age?)

  

 Things changed, however, once we reached the mid-teens, and our relationship rose to a new level…but the relationship was tenuous.  For months we would be “going steady,” (mid-fifties terminology for boyfriend/girlfriend,) only to break up the relationship for some adolescent reason.  The separation period would last a few months, and then some event or change of mind would take place, and we would be back to “going steady.”  The last time we “made up” and became “steady” again was in the eleventh grade.  My homeroom class at Robert E. Lee High School was just before lunch, and I would stash my lunch bag from home in my locker there when I first arrived at school and then pick it up on the way to the cafeteria.

    On this one particular day, when I unpacked my lunch in the cafeteria, there was a note which said, “Hi, Bobby!  I’ve been told that the way to a boy’s heart is through his stomach, so I’m going to try!”  And in my lunch bag were some cookies Shirley had made.  I fell like a ton of bricks…I had been missing her, anyway.  Within two years, on August 18, 1961, we were married and meeting the world’s challenges together. 

   In those first six years of marriage, we could put everything we owned in our car.  We traveled light from Baytown to the United States Air Force (Bloomington, Indiana; San Angelo, Texas; West Berlin, Germany, San Antonio, Texas; back to Baytown.)  By the time we arrived back in Baytown from the USAF, we had the first addition to our family, our son, which naturally changed the normal routine of our lives. We were suddenly burdened with…parenthood…i.e… responsibility.

    Shirley’s mother had passed away from cancer when Shirley was in her teens, and she became a substitute mom for her three younger siblings.  She took to the duties with the skill of a veteran.  If anyone was born to be a mother, it was Shirley, so when our son came along, she was up for the motherly duties.  To this day, she has a special way with infants, and they somehow sense that she is their friend.  She can calm the most tempestuous child.

    After we left the Air Force, I managed to graduate from the University of Houston and went to work for Sears, Roebuck and Company.  This was back when Sears was the big dog in retailing and offered a promising career.  However, circumstances changed when we gained the opportunity to move to Casper, Wyoming, and help her dad, Rev. James Creel, as he pastored a small Pentecostal church.  For seventeen years, we enjoyed Wyoming and the winter sports, fresh air, and laid-back atmosphere. 

   

However, even as we became more established, we still maintained our nomadic nature.  In fact, in our first thirty years of marriage, we lived in twenty-seven different locations, primarily due to the military and in addition, I had gotten into real estate marketing in Casper and bought and sold houses when it was profitable or attractive.  Since 1991, however, we have slowed down the movement considerably.  We migrated back to Baytown in 1991, and since then we have lived in four homes, our present home being in Tomball, Texas.

    During this now unbelievable sixty-four-year span, in times of financial struggle, health emergencies, packing/moving/unpacking, losses of loved ones, and job changes, my beloved wife has always been at my side, loyal and unmoving.  I have told more than one person that I have spent many days in the hospital in the last fifteen years, but I have never been in a hospital room alone.  Shirley has always been there.  During my darkest days and while in pain, I could always look over to the chair or sofa in the room and see the shadow of Shirley there. She was a very comforting sight.

 

    As we have now entered our twilight years, Shirley and I have accumulated a wealth of memories.  We have slowed down considerably, but what has remained is our strong love and dependence on one another. 

    During my lifetime, I have been honored to serve in many capacities, and I have received honor from those I served, but the greatest honor of them all was when a beautiful young girl named Shirley Renee Creel said she would be my wife.  All other honors pale when compared to that one, life changing moment when she said, “Yes.”