We Should’ve Never Met

We should’ve never met.

I grew up in the South in a Christian family with good parents.

She grew up in the North in a home where she was unwanted, and the stepfather was abusive.

I grew up thinking about all the things I could become: a firefighter, a soldier, a teacher.

She grew up trying to survive each day, just wanting to escape.

I never met a stranger; she never knew who she could trust.

Opposites in nearly every way imaginable we were.

God scooped her up and placed her in a tiny junior college.

I was there because my sister and brother had gone there before me. (My younger brother would be the fourth Johnson to attend.)

Music brought us together.

I loved to sing and joined the college chorus because I knew the director.

She joined the chorus because she wanted to prove to the younger boys and girls at the orphanage they could achieve their dreams, too.

She had the voice of an angel—pure, unwavering, on pitch—a voice that drew me like a sailor to the siren’s call.

We had little in common besides singing, so the odds were against us.

Yet here we are fifty years later, completely different from who we were when we met. I’ve changed because I wanted to and because she needed me to. Same for her.

It’s been easy, and it’s been hard. Happy and sad.

God’s been good to us.

Satan has tried to destroy us.

Hills and valleys, that’s what it’s been.

Joined heart to heart, with smiles on our faces and songs in our hearts, we’re writing the last chapters of our life together.

“Life, serve us up another hill. We’re ready to climb.”

* Taken from The Wit and Wisdom of David Johnson, Volume 1: I Didn’t Know Donkeys Could Laugh.