EIGHT YEARS AGO

Eight years ago today my face hovered over a toilet at the First Baptist Church in Tyler, Texas just moments before smiling for a crowd and cameras as I watched Becky walk down the aisle.

I was suffering from a long night, not second thoughts. It began with a poker game in which my friends purposefully lost hand after hand to me so I'd have some spending money for the honeymoon. And it's hard to lose to a guy who's never played. We smoked cigars and enjoyed the stench no woman in any of our futures would ever approve of as my single friends jokingly tried to persuade me a flower-pattern-free house and the freedom to leave the toilet seat up were reasons enough to go brideless for life. These were my last hours without a ring on my hand.

Eventually I would find myself held down, stripped, legs mangily shaved and body graffitied in Sharpie marker. Step by step instructions for the honeymoon scribbled all over me around the drawn on blue bikini outline. Nice. Men say, "I love you" in the oddest ways.

Brian, today my booking agent/road manager/co-pastor, was at the time just my brother-in-law. Our wives are sisters and when he married he was forced by his "friends" to stay up all night playing basketball. So Brian decided this would be a tradition. Marry into the family and you must go without sleep the night before the service. Bad idea.

There are three big rules to keeping me healthy: no red meat, no caffeine, give me sleep. If I break any of these rules I get sick, especially if you add into the mix a little healthy stress like, oh I don't know, a wedding.

The morning of the service Brian took me to breakfast at McDonalds. I was wiped and starving so I ordered a sausage something (rule one broken), a large Dr.Pepper (there goes rule two) and then hurried home to a harried mother who quickly told me I looked terrible and needed to hurry up and get ready for the service (and there's the last one).

Drinking a bottle of Pepto Bismol over the few hours before the musicians struck up didn't seem to do much. But I was eventually able to stand and walk to my position at the front of the church. Becky's Uncle and Father both presided over the ceremony and I'm told it was beautiful and perfect.

I can't remember. I took a muscle relaxer that seems to have relaxed my memory as well. I do remember Becky looking incredibly elegant and carefree, beaming as she walked toward me, looking me in the eyes every step of the way as if 800 people weren't staring at her. So confident. So calming.

And I remember the vows, the to have and to holds. I remember getting choked up at a line about taking her as my wife and best friend forever. There's something about having a best friend guaranteed for life that makes a guy with shaved legs, lurid drawings on his stomach, shaking knees, a disgruntled large intestine, bagged eyes, crawly skin, no money in the bank and no real job in sight feel good. To know someone would have me and hold me and befriend me even then, not knowing what forever would be made of, shook me up and stood me tall all at once. And still does.

"This ring means I love mommy," I told my oldest daughter last night at bedtime. "And mommy's ring means she loves me. That's why we never take them off. We always love each other and always will. When people get married they promise they'll always be best friends and take care of each other and love each other no matter what. And tomorrow we'll have a party because we kept our promise. It's called an anniversary."

Happy first eight years of forever to me.

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