A couple that was married for over 60 years, recently found out that the wife was terminally ill and expectations for death were short.

Towards the end of her life, they sat down to talk about making sure everything was in order and get it all square for her passing.

All through their marriage they kept now secrets from one another, except there was one thing they knew they had to deal with now: When they got married, she made him promise that she could keep a shoebox of stuff, and made him promise to never invade that shoebox.

He made that promise to her, and has kept to it every since.

So, during this talk, he looked at her and said “honey, we are going to have to deal with that”, she replied, “I know, why dont you go get it and we can open it up together”.
He goes and gets the shoebox, they open it up and thumb through it all, and he finds two crocheted dolls and a *wad* of cash. There was about $95,000.00 and these two dolls in the box.
He was shocked to see this contents, “Oh my, what is this about!”.

She says, “let’s start with the dolls…”
She goes on to say: “before I got married, my grandmother sat me down, and said”,”honey, I just need to tell you the secret of a great marriage. It’s not what you think, so I am going to tell you something, and it’s going to be hard to accept, but here’s the deal, if you want to have a wonderful marriage, I’m telling you right now you are going to have to make a decision, you are going to have to die to yourself. If you are unwilling to do that, I am telling you that you will never have a successful marriage unless you can die to yourself.” I said, “ok”, grandmother went on to say,”there is actually more than just that, you will have to make a commitment to live for him, that you are going to have to make a commitment that you will serve him for the rest of your life, I know that is hard to hear, but that is what you are going to need to do. If you are not willing to promise that, do not marry the man.”, “ok” I responded.
Grandmother goes on to say, “The truth of the matter is, it is going to get worse, you will discover, that man you are going to marry is incredibly self-centered, he is full of himself, and he is going to love it that you serve him, but he’s going to take advantage of that sometimes. There will be times that you will get so mad at his self-centeredness that you will just want to kill him, you will want to ring his neck so bad, but honey, do not do that, what you will want to do when you get mad at him, is you want to bite your tongue, take that energy and instead of exploding at him, what I want to suggest you do, is put that energy into knitting, and knit some crochet dolls.”

“and so, honey, that is why those dolls are in there…”

He looks at her and says, “oh honey, 60+ years, 60+ years, and only two small times…that I was…I am so sorry for those two times…” he continued, “so that explains the dolls, what about the cash?”

She answers with “well, everytime I got mad at you, I would knit a couple of dolls and I will sell them for $5 each…”

The real world is telling you that you are all that and a bag of chips, but Jesus is telling you that there is more to life than that.

There is more to life than me!

Jesus died for me, so that I can live!