You Light Up My Life (or I Like Golf…Don’t Judge Me!)

Last weekend The Wife and I (and the In-Laws) attended a conference held by our friends at Impact Ministries in Huntsville.  Last weekend also happened to be the British Open (or as golf snobs and British people call it “The Open Championship”).  Church and golf.  Golf and church. 

Church OR golf.  Golf OR church.

We have a dilemma.  More specifically, I have a dilemma.

Thanks to smart phones, we were able to keep up with scores in between conference sessions

(ok…”during” conference sessions, too).  One of us would pull up the current scores on our phone and discreetly (ok…not so discreetly) show the screen to the others.  As players moved up and down the leader board we would react with everything from the “raise-your-eyebrows-surprise look” to slightly muffled “wows”.  When Phil Mickelson pulled within a stroke of the lead on the back nine, you might have thought we got the Holy Ghost.

It was at that point, that I left.  It was with The Wife’s blessing (see how awesome she is) but I left church to go find a bar at 10:30 in the morning to watch golf.  Don’t judge me.  It’s a major championship.

So, I sat alone at a bar with every TV in the place set to the British Open.  Phil had one of the best final rounds in major championship history and won the Open by 3 strokes.  I had plenty of time to make it back to the church before the service was even over.

The lobby of the church was off to the side of the auditorium and I stood there listening in as the service wrapped up.  As I looked through the crowd, my eye was immediately captured by The Wife.   

If you’ve ever seen The Blues Brothers, you’ll remember the scene where Jake and Elwood are at church.  James Brown is the preacher and asks the congregation “Do you see the light?”.  Jake does see the light and he glows in a light descending from Heaven.

That’s what it’s like when I see The Wife.  (I can’t think of anything else

that she might have in common with Jake Blues other than that, though.  She doesn’t have her letters of her name tattooed on her fingers.  She doesn’t eat four fried chickens and a Coke for lunch.  She’s never even sung at Bob’s Country Bunker).  Wherever she may be and whatever the setting or circumstance, the sight of her grasps my attention and my heart even more now than it did when we first met.  Congratulations to Phil, but I’m a major winner, too.