After 44 years, Christina has still allowed me to live, and I have taken that as a sign I should probably keep her. Sounds like an old Geritol commercial.

That sounds like a joke, and it is, but only partly. (She meets the joke with a side eye and a look of careful). A long marriage carries humor the way an old workbench carries scratches. Every mark has a story, some came from carelessness, some came from repair, and some came from building something that mattered.

Christina and I were never a matched set in the showroom sense. I was the artist type with healthcare hours, medical-worker paychecks, and a habit of seeing the blue hiding inside the pink. She was the numbers gal, the accountant mind, the clean-line thinker who could look at my ornate French-country furniture dreams and gently return us to earth.

I saw color, and she saw structure. I chased meaning through the grain of the wood. She made sure the legs were level and the bills were paid.

Somehow, that worked, and obviously we had flipped the script.

We never really dated other people. Christina walked into our Sunday school class at the Idalou Church of Christ, and something about her felt familiar before I had any right to explain it. I wasn’t dramatic, or something I could prove with a trumpet blast and a spotlight.  It was just familiar, and something in me knew.

I could joke and say, “Yep, that’s the ball and chain right there,” but that was never disrespect. That was recognition with a grin on its face. Our mutual friend Donald introduced us. I attended Roosevelt High School, and she attended Idalou High school. That was trouble, High school rivals.

Now after 44 years, I can say it better. She was not a chain that trapped me, she was one of the first steady things I ever knew.

The early years were not polished. They were not a soft-focus anniversary slideshow with matching outfits and good lighting. They were young marriage, unstable work, and me trying to figure out what kind of man I was going to be.

I worked here and there. I would get mad, walk off a job, and move on to another one. That first year, starting in 1982, Christina probably wondered what on earth she had gotten herself into.

Lord help her, she had married an artist with a temper, a toolbox, and no visible five-year plan.

Then medicine hooked me. Healthcare gave my restless energy a badly needed direction. I liked the work. I liked learning. I liked being useful, and yes, I liked getting a steadier income. There is nothing wrong with admitting that a steady paycheck can feel like lumber under your feet when you have a young family to help hold up.

I joke from time to time I had to get better at working the wife and kids enjoyed things like roofs and electricity.

Our first child, Phalon, came 11 months to the day after we were married. I remember being at church and noticing Becky Sue counting months on her fingers. I wanted to holler across the room, “Eleven months, sister. That is more than nine.”

But people will count what people count.

Meanwhile, we were building, not perfectly. Not with all the right tools. Not always with enough patience, but we were building.

Over time, that old “ball and chain” joke changed meaning.

There came a season when Christina went through a serious health scare. A doctor friend of mine told me, with her compromised heart, the outcome often went one of three ways. One-third of people die. One-third stay the same. One-third get better. That kind of statement will sober a man in a hurry.

It was not a movie moment. It was not dramatic music and easy answers. It was the beginning of a real battle.

That was one of the early times I began to understand that building materials matter. Food mattered, evidence mattered, the right questions mattered. Choices mattered, not hype, not panic, and not miracle-in-a-bottle promises. Real choices,  hard choices. The kind of choices you make when you love someone and the road ahead does not come with a map printed in large letters.

So I went looking. I found the journals. I found the evidence. I started learning.

Health and healthcare are not easy paths. They are not for the passive. You have to pay attention, and learn ask the right questions. You must make choices. You must be willing to change what can be changed and accept what cannot be controlled.

Together, Christina and I worked. Together we fought. Together we learned.

And I thank God Christina became the one-third that got better, I do not say that lightly, and I do not call it luck.

I thank God for mercy. I thank God for doctors. I thank God for evidence, effort, and the willingness to participate. I thank God for the chain.

When her heart was in danger, I grabbed hold of that chain and did not let go.

Then a few years later, when my first major health scare came in the form of sudden cardiac arrest and coma, Christina grabbed hold of that same chain and did not let go either.

So yes, “ball and chain” may have started as a joke, but thank the Lord that chain bound us together.

Maybe that is what marriage becomes after enough storms. Not a chain that traps you, but one strong enough to keep both of you from being swept away.

This is just my Rebuild, it is ours, and what comes next is not only my Build.

It is ours too.

We do not know what the future holds for me, for her, or for either of us. I have learned not to make promises that do not belong to me. Health does not work that way. Life does not work that way. Faith does not mean pretending the hard things cannot happen.

But we do know how we intend to meet whatever comes next, with passion, with participation, with prayer and with the grace of God holding what our hands cannot.

After 44 years, I look back and see two people who were not always polished, not always easy, not always sure, but still here. Still reaching, still holding the chain.

Christina is not just part of my story, she is part of the structure, she is not decoration on the wall, she is one of the beams.

Ya’ll, if I have learned anything from rebuilding health, rebuilding identity, and now learning how to build forward, it is this: The materials matter, so does the bond.

Sometimes, by the mercy of God, the chain you joked about when you were young becomes the very thing that holds you when the storm comes.