//Marriage Does Work

Marriage Does Work

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By Brooke Starr

VALDOSTA – Hey there, reader, my name is Brooke Starr and I have been an air on personality off and on since the summer of 2000. In 2015 I joined the Hot 102.7 team and in 2016 I became the midday Dixie Diva for 99.5 Kix Country. Yes, I work with Shoutgun Charlie Walker, yall continue to pray for me. I grew up military and moved around 14 times before I was 18. I credit this to my personality, and my never-meet-a-stranger approach. Having to sit by yourself at the lunch table is the absolute worst, so you do what you got to do to make friends by the time the lunch bell rings.

I moved to Valdosta right after high school in 2000 and quickly met my future husband. We were supposed to meet up on a blind date, but being that I was all about looks, I wasn’t too fond of that idea.

I learned that he worked at Publix and decorated cakes in the bakery. These were the days long before Facebook, so one afternoon I decided to hide out in the cheese section to get a glimpse of what he looked like before we went out. He was told that I had short blonde hair, and that it was spikey in the back. He caught me staring him down and asked if my name was Brooke. He is nice looking so I ‘fessed up that yes, that was me.

Our first date was later then evening.

He told me that he drove a 1969 Volkswagen Beetle and that he would pick me up. That was fine with me, but little did I know that I could hear the car from a mile away, and when I got in the passenger’s seat, the floor had been rotted out. To start the Beetle, he had to push it up a hill, push it down a hill, jump inside while it was rolling, and then start it up.  He took me to the Waffle House, and the rest is history.

On Valentine’s Day, we will be married for 15 years. We got married so young, you can imagine it hasn’t been easy.

After just one year of being married I was diagnosed with stage two melanoma skin cancer. I had a major surgery on my leg and had to have my sentinel lymph node removed. It was a 50/50 percent chance that the cancer spread all over my body. The results came in, and I was cancer free, but the surgery was so intense I was in a wheelchair for a short time and couldn’t work.

After the cancer scare, Mark and I knew that we wanted children right away.

We tried for five years and discovered that it was me who couldn’t get pregnant. We decided to do Invitro Fertilization and go to a doctor in Jacksonville. We got a home equity loan that we would pay monthly for 10 years, and went for it.

We knew it was a gamble, but I was 26 and healthy so the percentage of me getting pregnant was high.

After the embryos were implanted, we waited for two weeks to find out if I had conceived. I got the call, and when the nurse asked for me, I knew it had not worked.

We were devastated.

We then decided to investigate adoption. We went to Macon and attended our very first parenting class. During the lesson the teacher told the group of about 20 couples that during this process, one of the couples would get pregnant.

I thought to myself, “I know that will not be because I did Invitro Fertilization, twice, and there is no way I’m going to get pregnant.”

A few days after the meeting I noticed I wasn’t feeling well. I added up all my symptoms and decided to take a pregnancy test. There it was, A POSITIVE. I told my husband and he feel to his knees and started praising God. We went to the doctor and I was already eight weeks pregnant. It was a complete miracle.

A good marriage is not something you find, it’s something that you must make. It doesn’t just work, you have to work at it. We have been through so many ups and downs. Lost jobs, we had to sell our home, so we wouldn’t lose it, chances to walk out of the marriage to be with someone else, but we have stuck by each other, because marriage does work.

I recently lost my grandmother, the sweetest most kind soul that one could ever meet. She and my grandfather were married for 63 years. They worked together, he owned a business of going from home-to-home to fix appliances, and she was his side kick. The business was called Mr. Fix It and Wife. When you saw one you saw the other, they were hardly ever apart, except for when it came to watching T.V. Papa didn’t like soaps, so one would go to the den and the other in the living room.

I was there when she took her last breath. My Papa was right by her side.

In those last moments, he caressed her face, and with his 89-year-old hands, touched her nose, her mouth, her ears, and thanked her.

Thanked her for the many years, thanked her for his three children, and told her she was the perfect woman.

I thought to myself, this is what life is about.  I asked the social worker at hospice how she has the strength to work there – she simply said after all of her years of experience, she has learned that marriage does work.

“Love is patient, love is kind, it does not envy, it does not boast, it is not rude, not self-seeking, not easily angered, keeps not records of wrongs, does not delight in evil, rejoices with the truth, always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres, love never fails.”