The next day, at the wedding, all eight (including Ken) of those Marines were dressed to the nines in their white uniforms, swords, medals--they were magnificent.  At that moment, it was hard to picture those dignified men lugging Ken to a cow pond.  But that is what Marines are made of.  The ability to rise to the moment and do what they set out to do.

It was my first introduction to the Marine Corps.  Up until Ken's friends flew in to participate in our wedding, I had never been around Marines.  Or military of any kind.  It was an awesome experience for an eighteen year old girl from Oklahoma.  The entire bunch of them were bigger than life.  If I had planned a wedding of my dreams, I never could have imagined anything so fantastic.  Right up to the moment that they whacked me on the rear with their swords as we left the ceremony under the arch of swords.

I was almost nine years younger than Ken.  For the next year, the Marines in his squadron were so gracious to me as I was trying to figure it all out.   Their wives took me under their wings and treated me like one of their own.  I was so young.  They were all so mature.  They helped me over and over again as I tried to figure out how to fit in with this foreign group of people.   Moving to Pensacola to the training command (aviation) was like moving to the moon.  I was a baby alien.  It was a strange world.

But God is good.  I had Ken.  And he was wonderful.  He walked in with his paycheck that first month, laid it on the kitchen table and said, "That's what we make.  Learn how to spend it because I will be gone over half the time.  You have to take care of everything, so you might as well start now."

Ephesians 5: 33 "...let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband."