Dave Rhoades - In Transit

 July 23, 1981 - July 23, 2009 

What does it take any more to make a marriage last for 28 years?

What’s the secret of our success?

A lot of love.

A lot of life.

A lot of flavor.

A lot of spice.

A lot of friendship

A lot of joy.

A lot of faith.

A lot of kids.

A lot of grandkids.

A lot of Jesus

I look at that picture above and remember that day and I would walk that aisle again. Look into your eyes once again and say the words that opened the doorway to our lives together… I take you to be my wife…

And after countless hours of laughter and tears, babies crying and growing and schooling and marriages and now more babies crying into another generation, I would say to you, my Jeanie, I would do it all again. I’ve counted the cost. I’ve weighed it in the balance. And I am not found wanting for love.

I remember lying in bed at night in a single wide trailer and listening to the North Dakota County Fair less than three blocks away while Air Supply cranked out their tunes that filled that 1981 sky. “You’re Every Woman In The World To Me…”

The other night we lay in bed listening to a cavalcade of pounding rain and hail pelting our backyard and I thought of all eight of our children now and five grandchildren who are all within 15 minutes of us as they lay in their beds, some hearing the same storm and some sleeping peacefully through it and they didn’t realize that to me, the heavenly thump of the iced water still drummed out the tune: “You’re Every Woman In The World To Me…”

You always have been and you still are…

We’ve changed rhythms from time to time, we’ve outlasted Presidency’s. You and I have seen space shuttles go up and the Berlin Wall and the World Trade Centers come down. We have seen the inception of the World Wide Web and the demise of governments and dot coms. You and I have seen the marriages dissolve of people that told us we would never make it. We’ve lived life together and seen miracles at our fingertips.

We’ve loved and laughed and cried together.

And although Air Supply is still around in infomercial form, we’ve changed songs a few times but not sentiment…

I found a unique combination to express it…

Looks like we made it
Look how far we’ve come my baby
We mighta took the long way
We knew we’d get there someday They said, “I bet they’ll never make it”
But just look at us holding on
We’re still together still going strong