Healing, Laughter, and Years of Choosing Each Other
My husband Mark and I have been attending our church for just under a year now. Mike and Diane have been there for twenty-five.
They’re the front-row couple — the ones who greet you with genuine warmth, who radiate something that can’t be manufactured or performed, only lived. We’d seen them nearly every Sunday and quietly admired the peace that seemed to wrap around them. For a while, that distant admiration and brief conversations after church were enough.
But deep down, I was curious. What was their secret?
I wanted to ask, I really did, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Until one day, I got a little brave. Well, brave-ish. I nudged Mark and whispered, “You should ask them to lunch.” (Yes — I totally made him do the asking.)
To my surprise, they said yes.
And that’s how we found ourselves sitting across from a couple who, over sandwiches and soft laughter, ended up unlocking something in me I didn’t realize was still sealed shut.
When Lunch Feels Like Church
It wasn’t anything dramatic. No powerful testimony or emotional breakthrough. Just a gentle presence that filled the space between bites. A tenderness that wrapped our table like a warm blanket, and something within me began to unfold.
They didn’t preach or attempt to fix anything. They simply spoke with calm, seasoned wisdom that made me feel safe. Understood. Seen. And in the midst of that gentleness, I felt something shift inside me that had been rigid and stuck for far too long.
Mike and Diane have been married for fifty-two years. Their love radiates in everything — the way they look at each other, how they listen, the way they laugh together. I hadn’t realized how desperately I needed to witness that kind of connection until I was sitting in it.
But it was how they arrived at fifty-two years that quietly broke my heart open.
The Long Way to Love
They didn’t just fall in love and ride off into the sunset. When they were young, they were told they couldn’t be together, so they went their separate ways.
Mike joined the military. Diane moved forward with her life. They lost touch. Each married someone else. Each built a family. And each, eventually, walked through the heartbreak of divorce.
Years later, Mike returned home from Vietnam — his second tour behind him. This time, he came back not to a hero’s welcome, but to a quiet house and the children his wife had left behind. As he unpacked his suitcase, something tumbled out — an old piece of paper with an address written on it.
Diane’s address.
While Mike was overseas, Diane had written a letter to Mike’s mother, who then passed Diane’s address on to him.
So Mike wrote her. Nothing elaborate, just a simple note: he missed her. He hoped she was well. He signed it: Bachelor Father.
Diane wrote back. She’d missed him too. She signed hers: Bachelor Mother.
And that became the beginning… of their real beginning.
Now, decades later, they sit across from us — still in love, still glowing, still approaching life together as if it’s the greatest honor in the world.
The Skip-Bo Revelation
And then, right in the middle of all that gentle wisdom and story-sharing, came the most unexpected detail.
Mike and Diane have been playing Skip-Bo every single morning for twenty-five years.
Yes. Every morning.
Over coffee, cards, conversation, and connection.
And they keep score. Real score. At the end of each year, whoever has the most wins chooses a fun outing. Last year? Diane won. (And let the record show — she’s winning again this year.) She picked the Knott’s Berry Farm fried chicken dinner, because sometimes love tastes like nostalgia.
But the beauty isn’t in the win — it’s in the ritual. The rhythm. The choosing, again and again, to sit across the table and play.
They weren’t flashy or performative. They just were. Soft, sincere, and full of love — the kind that shows up not in dramatic declarations, but in how you treat someone on a Tuesday morning with a deck of cards.
They offered simple wisdom:
- “You don’t have to agree on everything — you just have to remember you’re on the same team.”
- “Laugh. Pray. Communicate.”
- “You can either fight about it… or laugh through it.”
It made me realize: love doesn’t have to be loud to be lasting. <div style=”text-align:center; font-style:italic; font-size:1.2em; margin: 1.5em 0;”> Sometimes love sounds like shuffling cards. Looks like playful eye-rolls across the breakfast table. Feels like gentle teasing after someone draws the wrong card. And yes — sometimes it ends with fried chicken. </div>
They bicker. They lovingly trash-talk over rankings. But underneath it all flows an unwavering kindness, a quiet fire built not from perfection but from practice.
Because it’s not the big moments that keep love alive. It’s the sitting down. The showing up. The “let’s play again tomorrow.”
Emotional Backpacks
As our lunch continued, Diane shared a metaphor that stayed with me — the idea of emotional backpacks.
We all carry one. And over time, it grows heavy, filled with unspoken hurts, buried emotions, and tiny resentments. If we don’t pause to unpack it regularly, it will ultimately break us.
That truth hit home. I hadn’t realized how much I’d been carrying until she named it.
That evening, as I reflected on Diane’s words, everything poured out of me — the shame, the guilt, the pain I’d buried because I feared what speaking it might mean. I was terrified of rejection, of being “too much,” of making others uncomfortable. But the truth was, I had been carrying it. And it was heavy. And I was breaking.
So I did it. I unpacked my backpack. I released it — through honest confession and vulnerability, through conversations with God, myself, and my husband. And in that release, I experienced something I hadn’t felt in ages:
Relief. Clarity. Peace.
It was as if God whispered, “Now doesn’t that feel better?”
And it did.
The Masks We Wear
But the unpacking didn’t stop there.
As I laid down what I had buried deep inside, I discovered something else I’d been carrying — not in a backpack, but on my face.
A mask.
Even after releasing the pain, I realized I was still performing. Still trying to appear put-together, strong, and unfazed. The “I’m fine” mask. The “I’ve got it together” mask. The smile I wore even when I was drowning inside.
I had worn it for so long, it started to feel like a part of me. Especially around other women. Around my family. Around my husband.
But the truth?
I’m a beautiful mess. I overthink everything. I get overwhelmed easily. I cry when I should stand firm. I go quiet when I should speak up. I long to be fully present with my daughter, but sometimes I’m too emotionally drained to play. I want to love my husband completely, but I’m afraid to reveal just how fragile I truly am.
It’s exhausting.
And for a long time, it kept me from fully inhabiting the very life God had given me — a life that once lived only in my imagination.
I grew up believing better things weren’t meant for me. I didn’t know if I’d ever escape that trailer park, or the fear that came with it. But here I am, living a life that feels like an answered prayer.
A husband who cherishes me. A child I once begged God for. A home that looks like a dream.
And yet, I found myself missing it — too distracted, too disconnected to fully appreciate the miracle of now.
What Love Actually Looks Like
That night, something shifted. I saw the ache for “more” for what it was — an illusion that kept me chasing instead of receiving.
Maybe my only job was to show up for this moment. To pray. To stay grounded in God’s grace. To stop pretending I had to hold it all together.
I was overcomplicating what God made simple.
It starts with being present. Being grateful. Being honest. And remembering that when life gets heavy again — and it will — I have to pause, breathe, and unpack my backpack.
Because when you truly love someone, you fight for that relationship. You show up consistently. You communicate honestly. You set aside your pride. You remember that your vows weren’t just beautiful poetry — they were sacred promises made before God.
Living those promises begins with genuine listening. Not defensive reactions, but pausing, breathing, and saying, “Something must really be wrong. Let’s work through this together. I want to understand.”
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. — 1 Corinthians 13:7
This kind of intentional, loving commitment could heal countless relationships if we’d simply stop trying to win and start trying to love.
Mike and Diane reminded me — without fanfare — that joy can be holy too. That rituals can be romantic. That legacy isn’t always a grand gesture.
Sometimes, it’s the simple choice to pour coffee, pull out the cards, and keep choosing the same person… fifty-two years later.
The Legacy of Small Things
Mike and Diane didn’t just show me what fifty-two years of marriage looks like — they showed me what it means to choose love every single day.
In the morning ritual of shuffling cards.
In the gentle teasing over who’s winning.
In the way they still light up when they look at each other.
Watching them reminded me: removing the masks is terrifying, but I cannot continue living for others’ approval. The only voice that truly matters is God’s.
And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. — Colossians 3:14
Under Jesus’ covenant, it’s not about rigid rituals or impossible perfection. It’s about goodness. Loving others well. Living gracefully.
And like Mike and Diane taught me, the practice begins at home. Around our own breakfast table. In our own daily rhythms. In choosing to show up for each other, one ordinary morning at a time.
Here’s to the Skip-Bo kind of love. To marriages that don’t just endure — they enjoy. To couples who keep choosing each other even when life is messy, even when one of them keeps winning at cards.
Here’s to sandwiches that feel like sanctuaries and morning rituals that keep hearts soft.
This is what it means to build a love that lasts. Not in grand declarations, but in the holy, ordinary choice to keep showing up… one hand at a time.
