BY HOW MUCH LOVE REMAINS

(thoughtful story)
I never had any question about what I wanted to do with my life. I would marry, major in advertising at the University of Minnesota, and then open my own ad agency. Right out of college, I tasted success. Soon my company was billing in the millions. I bought an airplane, a boat, a Mercedes, a limo. I entertained my clients at lavish dinners and events. There seemed to be no limit to my bank account. I married Karla. Everything was going according to plan.

Then desktop publishing arrived on the business scene---and disaster struck. I watched many of my clients depart as they opened their own in-house agencies. Slowly I began to lose financial ground... I sold my Mercedes and my Fiat on the same painful day, and four months later I watched as someone drove my limo away.

Soon I was forced to find a buyer for my four-seater airplane and then, at last, my boat. While the money flowed, Karla and I had collected so many things, some useful, others useless. Now my wife recommended that we sell many of these possessions at weekend garage sales to cover our living expenses. "We don't really need them anyway," she declared.

It wasn't long until I was stripped of everything---except Karla. I'd figured soon she'd be disappearing too because most of my focus had been on money and not her. Then, just when I figured things couldn't get much worse, they did. In the next six months, most of my staff left,taking chunks of the business with them. My wife and daughter were rushed to an emergency room after a near-fatal accident. My father died of cancer. And finally our house was struck by lightning...

I felt like a modern-day Job. I'll never forget that day I came home from my work feeling everything was at an end. I sat at the kitchen table, my face in my hands. All that remained was for Karla to leave. But unlike Job's wife who said, "Curse God and die!" Karla encouraged me. "Honey, I believe in you," she said. "And what's more, this is probably the best thing that has ever happened to us." I looked at her as if she had lost her mind. But that was the turning point. The years that followed proved she was right.

Today, Karla and I viewed our past adversities as a valuable learning experience.---not a hard-luck story. All those losses drew us closer together and closer to God. I gave up my fantasy I could actually control the world. And with Karla's sweet help, I learned all over again how to enjoy simple pleasures in life---the smell of toothpaste on my child's breath at bedtime, the sight of a single flower in our garden, my wife's loving touch on my arm.

I always thought that the "poorer" in "for richer or poorer" was something terrible a spouse promised to endure. But now I know the truth. Less is often more. And a husband's true riches are best measured by how much love remains when everything else is taken away

By Steve Gottry,Lightning Strikes Twice