Tomorrow, May 31, is Nanci’s and my 50th wedding anniversary. I thank God for His faithfulness and the time we had together.

I’m so grateful for how Nanci put up with me for all those years, and for being not only my wife, but also my best friend and my closest sister in Christ. I keep thanking God for her partnership and companionship in the gospel. I first heard the gospel from Nanci, and we discussed messages I was hearing at church and youth group for eight months before I came to Christ as a sophomore in high school. Later, we went through Bible college together and were in most of each other’s classes. We discussed lectures and did our homework together.

We wanted to grow old together. If you’d told us when we got married at 21 that we would live to be 68, we would have said, we did grow old together! But when you’re 68, it’s like the new 48. Nanci and I were married in 1975, but we were best friends from the day we met as freshmen in high school, December 7, 1968. She was my closest friend for 53 and a half years. That is a privilege and a treasure. I will not regret the years we might have had but be profoundly grateful for the years we did have—and not just the quantity, but the quality. 

In the years before Nanci died, we experienced what it was to love and trust each other more than we ever had. A couple of weeks before her homegoing, Nanci was sitting up in bed, and I was holding her hand and she said, smiling but in tears, “Randy, thank you for my life." I said in tears, "Nanci, thank you for my life." I thought it was so beautiful that we saw our lives as so intertwined, we really had become one. We certainly didn’t do everything right, but by God’s grace, He used us in each other’s lives to grow us spiritually, and to make us better followers of Jesus. 

Nanci and I knew God to be good and kind and absolutely faithful before her four plus years of dealing with cancer, but we saw Him in so many ways during that time that it brings tears of profound gratitude to my eyes.

Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,

    for his compassions never fail.

They are new every morning;

    great is your faithfulness. 

Lamentations 3:22–23

The memories are so good and so precious that they make me smile and fill my heart. At first after her death, it was nine parts sorrow for every one part joy. A year later, it was five parts of each, and now it is nine parts happiness and one part sorrow. I have wept often, but I experience more joy in reflecting upon her than I do sorrow. There is no despair, only gratitude.

I can't live without Jesus, and while I don't want to live without Nanci, that is the way it is, and for now I must. I am sorrowful, yet always rejoicing, as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 6:10. I love that we are to be always rejoicing, instead of always sorrowful—the joy eclipses the sorrow.

It is my wholehearted belief that Nanci’s death was not the end of our relationship, only a temporary interruption. The great reunion awaits us, and I anticipate it and delight in imagining it with everything in me.

According to what Jesus said in Matthew 22:38 we will not be married to our earthly spouses in Heaven, but if they and we are believers, we should not think for a moment that we will not have a great relationship with them. I’m well aware that many marriages have not worked out on earth. But we will all be married to Jesus, and He will never let us down. So it's not that there is no marriage in Heaven, but that there is one marriage in Heaven, and all of us will experience that as the corporate bride of Christ. (See this article for more.)

I fully anticipate no one besides God will understand me better on the New Earth than Nanci, and there’s nobody whose company I’ll seek and enjoy more than Nanci’s. The joys of marriage in eternity will be far greater because of the character and love of our Bridegroom. I rejoice for Nanci and for me that we’ll both be married to the most wonderful person in the universe.

Also, while thinking about what I would say in this blog, I entered my name and Nanci's into a normal search engine (not AI) and the first thing that popped up was something generated by artificial intelligence that said I was remarried in August 2024. If you didn't know that, welcome to the club, because I didn't know it either. My first thought was “whoever she is, I better get her something for our first anniversary.”

Seriously, I have not remarried, though it would be perfectly fine if I did. But I have no plans for remarriage. Artificial intelligence can be great, but there is a reason it is called “artificial.” 😂