August 13, 1976 — August 13, 2026

 

 

Friday, August 13th, 1976. Silvis, Illinois. An evening wedding — candles, family, and a young woman in a white dress standing at the back of the church with her father, ready to walk toward the rest of her life.

And then the music started. The wrong song.

I stopped. Right there at the back of the church, I stopped. My dad — without a word — gave my arm the gentlest pull. Keep going. And I did. I walked down that aisle, married Tim Journy, and stepped into fifty years I could never have imagined if I tried.

That moment has stayed with me all these years, not as an embarrassing memory, but as a metaphor. Life rarely plays the song you were expecting. And the question is always the same: Do you stop? Or do you keep walking?

The Early Years

When you are twenty-something and in love, you believe in the life you are building together. What you cannot see — what no one tells you — is how many versions of yourself you will become along the way, and how many versions of your marriage you will have to choose to rebuild.

Tim and I were young, full of hope, and completely unaware of what was ahead. We packed up our lives and moved to Texas with two little ones in tow, added two more children after we arrived, and tried to keep up with the beautiful, exhausting pace of a growing family. Football. Soccer. Swimming. Sideline cheers and late-night drives. The ordinary, sacred chaos of raising children.

You don’t know, when you say ‘I do,’ what your life, your marriage, and your very self will look like fifty years from now. You simply cannot know.

Tim is a man of extraordinary determination. Once he commits to something — a goal, a career, a person — he does not waver. He worked long, hard hours climbing toward partner at a public accounting firm, and I watched him do it with the kind of focus most people only read about. We were building something. A career. A family. A life.

And here is something it took me far too long to learn: Tim did things differently than I did. He had different expectations than mine. He loved differently than I loved. When you are young and still swimming in that first rush of love, you don’t see difference as difference — you see it as a problem. You read it as he doesn’t understand, he isn’t trying. You measure him against how you would have done it, and of course he comes up short, because he isn’t you. I spent years trying to translate Tim into my language instead of learning his. If I could go back and tell that young bride one thing, it would be this: different isn’t deficient. Get curious before you get critical.

When the Ground Shifts

Our youngest child was born and airlifted to the children’s hospital in Fort Worth — six hours away. I don’t know how to describe that kind of fear to someone who hasn’t held it. The helplessness. The waiting. The prayers that stopped being sentences and became just breath and desperation.

What I also remember is this: we were never alone in it. The town of Midland, Texas showed up. Food appeared at our door. Someone stepped in to watch our children, shuttling them to school and activities, keeping life as normal as possible. My mother, who never liked to fly, got on a plane and came anyway. Because that is what mothers do. Prayers were offered by people who barely knew us. The community held us up when we could not stand on our own.

I spent weeks in that neonatal center, staying at the Ronald McDonald House — sleeping in a borrowed bed in a borrowed city, learning the rhythms of monitors and alarms and tiny victories. And then, finally, we brought him home. His brothers and sister were waiting at the door, wrapping themselves around him before I had even set down the diaper bag. Small arms, big love. A family, whole again.

I had him evaluated for the local infant stimulation program right away — not because I expected the worst, but because if there were any delays at all, I wanted them caught early so we could get to work on them. Early beats behind, every single time. That is a decision I would make a thousand times over.

That season shaped the rest of my life. Out of it, I started a support group called Special Care Infants, to help other families walk through what we had just walked through. My work looks different today — but all of it traces back to those six hours of highway and those weeks in that hospital.

I have never forgotten what it felt like to be carried. People showing up in the hard seasons — that is one of the most holy things human beings do for one another.

There were seasons where I made choices I look back on and cringe. Building a house in Florida while Tim’s work was really in New York. Decisions that created stress and distance we had to work through. Marriage is not a straight line. It is a series of choices, some wise, some regrettable, and the commitment to keep choosing each other through all of it.

 

The Hardest Season

Every long marriage has a season that breaks you open. Ours was no different. There came a time when Tim and I faced something that threatened to end everything we had built — a crisis that forced us both to look honestly at ourselves, at each other, and at what we truly wanted our marriage to be.

It would have been easier to walk away. Many people do. But we chose differently. We chose to fight — not against each other, but for each other. For the family we had built. For the future we still believed was possible.

Healing is not pretty. It is not fast. It does not happen because you want it to — it happens because you fight for it. With your faith, your honesty, and your refusal to let a broken season define what could still be built.

We healed. And if we healed, others can too. That is not a slogan. That is the testimony of fifty years.

What We Became

Out of the hardest season came a calling. Tim and I began walking alongside other couples in crisis — because we believed someone needed to hear that restoration is possible. We have sat with couples who felt completely hopeless and watched them find their way back to each other. We teach at our church. We lead marriage groups. And every single time I sit across from someone who is hurting, I remember who we were — and I know without a doubt that they can find their way through.

Here is what all of it taught me: the success of a marriage is not determined by the twists. It is determined by how the two of you navigate them. Not compatibility. Not chemistry. Not luck. Navigation.

We have four children, four incredible spouses who joined our family, and ten grandchildren who fill our lives with the kind of joy that makes the hard years make sense. I have been a foster mom to infants waiting for adoption. I have moved six times across this country and made a home in every single place. And the life I am living today — coaching, teaching, loving this family — is more than that twenty-something bride in Silvis could have ever dreamed.

 

Fifty Years

Here is what I know now that I did not know then:

You do not marry a person. You marry a journey. And that journey will take you through seasons you chose and seasons that chose you. It will ask more of you than you think you have. It will require you to change, to grieve, to forgive, to start again.

And if you keep walking — through the wrong song and the hard moves and the long work hours and the difficult seasons and the slow, holy work of rebuilding — you might find yourself here. Fifty years in, sitting across from the man you chose on a Friday night in August, celebrating not a perfect marriage but a real one. A restored one. A beautiful one.

When I think about what I want to leave behind, it isn’t complicated. I want the legacy that I loved with my whole heart. That I was kind. That I was respectful. And that I lived my truth.

To our children and grandchildren who are here with us today — this is your story too. You are the reason the hard seasons were worth fighting through. You are proof that choosing each other, over and over again, produces something more beautiful than either of us could have built alone.

Keep walking. Love well. And when life plays the wrong song — keep going anyway.

Here’s to fifty years — and to whatever God has planned for the seasons still to come.

 

With love, gratitude, and a whole lot of grace,

Diana & Tim Journy

#ClaimingVictory