When I prayed for a friend,
God knew best,
and He sent you to me.
And though I might have thought
the choosing was mine,
I know now that couldn’t be.

Maybe some twenty-something-year-olds
have a good stock of wisdom and plans
but we had to pick it up along the way
such has been life’s varied demands.

You pray and hope for a good wife
as a woman prays and hopes for a man
to hold a hand when it’s needed
or to push when you need two hands.
To be cover in bad weather,
to be shade when the sun’s too good,
to say stop when you shouldn’t,
then go when you should.

Though I’m not so good at baseball,
I’m certain you’ll be great for late innings.
Of course, we can’t say for sure
how long the game will last,
though we’re far from the beginning.

So thanks for keeping your promise to me,
as I’ve kept mine to you,
to be there for happy times,
as well as when times were blue,
and remembering, sometimes,
when we thought one was choosing,
God was choosing two.

© Joel Tipple 11/20/2018