Who is that young woman?
    She shines out like the dawn.
She is as pretty as the moon.
    She is as bright as the sun.
She is as awesome
    as the stars in the sky.

Song of Songs 6:10

Saturday February 4th – the 46th anniversary of our first date – turned out to be a beautiful day. Rebekah and I enjoyed a marvelous un-rushed brunch together, we both got some important work done, we relaxed to the soundtrack of some of our favorite music from college days, and we simply celebrated the fact of forty-six amazing years.

I have to give our Alexa smart-speaker sound system some credit, it really is learning our music preferences well.

All I had to do was ask for Leo Sayer’s “When I Need Love” (the story of why that is an important song to us may have to wait for another post) and Alexa followed up with a series of uncannily spot-on tracks: “To the Morning” (Dan Fogelberg), “Horse with No Name” (America), “The Air that I Breathe” (Hollies) and more.

I have enough posts that elaborate on that epic, consequential first-date day in 1977, but I will continue my recent tradition of side-by-side then-and-now pics.

The funny line in the card I gave Rebekah is that one day we may be old and wrinkled.

• “Someday we’ll be one of those cute old couples” it reads on the picture.
• Then, inside, it continues: “Actually, you’ll be the cute one. I’ll just be the lucky one.”

As you can see, the card is 100% accurate, and I am not so much lucky as “monumentally blessed”.

I’ll conclude with Peterson’s translation of Song of Songs 6:10 in The Message. I believe it hits all the right notes. In love, and because of love – DEREK

“Has anyone ever seen anything like this—
    dawn-fresh, moon-lovely, sun-radiant,
    ravishing as the night sky with its galaxies of stars?”