Years ago, I used to travel once each year to Serbia, where I lectured in a Bible School. I soon realised how fascinated people were to find out about my life back home, and decided to make those conversations easier. I filled a little photo album with pictures of my ordinary life. As well as family, friends and colleagues there were pictures of red post boxes, buses, local shops and even the supermarket where I did my shopping. My Serbian friends loved them, and they led to many an interesting conversation.
If I had moved abroad and kept that album - I wonder how it might have looked a few years down the line? Would the once familiar have looked strange, or quaint, or slightly unbelievable?
As I write this now, I have been twisting the wedding ring on my left hand, and looking at the picture below, taken on August 29th 1987. Those two figures at the front of St Salvator's Chapel in St Andrews look so very far away. They don't look real to me. In fact they look rather like the figures of a bride and groom you might stand on the icing of a wedding cake.
They are not. That is my beloved Fiona and I, flanked by her sister on one side and my brother on the other. It was taken just at the moment that we made our wedding vows to each other 30 years and 364 days ago. Like every couple on their wedding day, our heads were filled with dreams of what the future might hold. Many of them came true, and there were many more besides. Others did not, and I have left them on the far shore of that other country.
I shall not blog tomorrow, but today I wanted to thank God for the 31 years that were. Throughout them I was fortunate enough to have a companion whose faith, wit and steadfast love made me whole. For that, I shall always be grateful. God bless you and keep you, my #bravestandbest
