Today, Charlie and I celebrate 36 years of marriage.
Who would have guessed that 18-year-old, freshly-graduated Jenay and 26-year-old, bull-riding Charlie would make it this far? We never doubted it—yet honestly, we never really thought about it either. We just jumped in like a couple of kids who didn’t know any better.
We both know now what we didn’t know then: the only reason we are still standing—still loving, still together, still growing—is the grace and mercy of God.
We have been complete idiots. Truly. We’ve committed every sin in the book. We’ve done it all wrong—and God has made it all right. He has disciplined us and blessed us like beloved children.
He not only kept us together for 36 years—Love has sustained us, carried us, blessed us. He and He alone has covered us. Not because we ever deserved it, but because He is God, and He is good, and because for most of our 36 years we have been utterly desperate for Him. The more we needed Him, the more clearly we could see Him; He has always been there.
And when we were tapped out, empty, done—He always gave us more.
At our wedding, my cousin Jimi sang Randy Travis’s Forever and Ever, Amen. Back then it was fun and full of future hopes. But now—after 36 years—it hits differently. Our love song sounds more like Psalm 136: a line of thanks, a line of trial, and then blessing—always followed by the refrain, “His Faithful Love Endures Forever.”
That is how I see the story of our life.
I give thanks for our marriage, our kids, their marriages, and their kids.
His Faithful Love Endures Forever.
We got married. We had four kids—Lashae, Kole, Charsie, and Luke. We had a house, a barn, jobs, kids and animals.
His Faithful Love Endures Forever.
Then we sold everything and moved right down the road to grow bigger and stronger. Shortly after, we became buried in stress from a bad business deal and had to basically start all over.
His Faithful Love Endures Forever.
We were still together, and now I carried baby number five. Reece was born the day before our 19th anniversary—we had no idea what was next, but we had Love, and we celebrated new life.
His Faithful Love Endures Forever.
When we were broke and rebuilding, God broke our hearts for what breaks His. God opened our eyes and hearts to the beauty of adoption and we adopted our daughter, Esther, from Uganda, she is our sixth child. On the same first mission trip to Uganda we added two more sons—Andule Simon and Tabule Patrick. They became ours in every way but proximity.
His Faithful Love Endures Forever.
When we gave our oldest daughter away in marriage, to a young man from our small community, they knew they wanted to move to Montana as soon as possible. At their wedding, I was big time pregnant with baby number seven, Maezie—number six to grow in my belly
His Faithful Love Endures Forever.
We adopted again—child number eight—a boy named Mikiyas. He was an unexpected gift. It’s hard to understand how adoption can be a surprise, but he was a great surprise. And when we thought our home and our lives couldn’t possibly hold any more, I found out I was pregnant with number seven —our ninth child. Cellie Joy was born when I was 44. I had been praying for joy, and God gave me more than I could handle.
His Faithful Love Endures Forever
When our second daughter—third in the lineup—married a man she met at the church Charlie helped build, it was bittersweet. That place held deep church hurt and overwhelming joy. We watched our daughter meet and marry her husband there, saw several of our kids baptized, and babies dedicated—all under the same roof. We were broken and built stronger in that building. They moved to Montana shortly after they got married as well.
His Faithful Love Endures Forever.
Our oldest son got married in California to a girl from Wisconsin, and they moved to Montana too. That made 3 of our oldest kids married and living in Montana. Once again, it all added up, but only by God math—which is even crazier than girl math.
His Faithful Love Endures Forever.
Through eight years of births, adoptions, missions, building projects, marriages, and grand babies, we fought like crazy to keep our little piece of land in this world. We fought hard—and we lost. We fell short—short-sold.
But God. He never falls short.
His Faithful Love Endures Forever.
He used that short sale to move us—far away, but closer to our married kids and three grands, with twin grands on the way to make five in six years. The timing was perfect.
His Faithful Love Endures Forever.
We moved… and then they moved away.
His Faithful Love Endures Forever.
Another son married—he moved back to Oregon to go get his bride. We’ve welcomed five more grandkids, for a total of ten now; plus we still have our sons in Uganda, one married with one grand and another on the way.
And over the last few years, God has added a bonus daughter—Divine. Our good friends’ youngest from Uganda has come to live with us. We’ve shared life with her family for over a decade, and it has been a divine appointment to help raise her. She is with us; and we are all family.
We started with two.
Now we are 26 in 36 years.
God has multiplied this family in every possible way. His math is wild and wonderful. We are thankful and messy and amazed.
His Faithful Love Endures Forever.
None of this happened in an orderly fashion. We can read it line by line, but it all overlaps and swirls around to make up this mess of people.
Every time God let us break, He filled us with more. We have been broken and blessed beyond anything we could dream or imagine.
This morning I read Psalm 136 to the kids. I read a line, and they answered:
“His Faithful Love Endures Forever.”
At the end, I asked each of them to name something from their own lives.
And after every single one, we all responded together:
His Faithful Love Endures Forever.
Mine is this today: It is amazing what God can do through two broken people over 36 years.
His Faithful Love Endures Forever.
We love each one another deeply and we have a lot of fun along the way.
