Partner's for life...

I looked across the porch this morning and saw the tears in her eyes.  These past few years have been very hard on my sweet wife.  I didn't know that I was suffering from an undiagnosed battle with Parkinson's disease.   This was stealing my ability to think through problems and decisions clearly and decisively as I have most of my life.  She suffered through being the lone voice of both "somethings wrong" , and the need to protect me from criticism.  Meanwhile, I was floating off into some kind of mental fog that comes with this disease, and insisted on staying involved in what is clearly one of the most easily criticized professions you can work in...I was the Pastor of a local church. She was living in a no win situation.  It might have been easier if I had been involved in some moral failure because than she could have left me without being criticized.  In the Christian world women can never leave, they are just expected to suffer on in silence.  This has been the price that she has paid to be my partner and I am sorry she has paid it.  I have seen the pain in her eyes.  Apparently when she said till death do us part, she really meant it.