They said we’d never make it. “You can’t live on love.” They actually said those exact words. Out loud.

People thought we would be divorced before Christmas. The preacher refused to marry us.

After months of marriage counseling, sitting in the reverend’s cramped little office, which smelled like dirty underpants, the Venerable Reverend looked at us with hard eyes, and he said, “I won’t marry you. You can’t live on love.”

Just like that. Point blank. Matter of fact.

He used his Holier-Than-Thou tone of voice. The one he used for baptisms and fundraisers.

We were crushed, of course. And ticked off. Especially after I’d paid $19.99 apiece for those stupid marriage workbooks from Lifeway.

Books which contained verbatim statements such as: “Make frequent investments into your spouse’s emotional bank account by unexpectedly kissing your spouse’s cheek and saying, ‘Let’s pray together!’”

Gag me with a backhoe.

Your mother wrote a nasty letter to the preacher. Your father threatened to put sugar in the preacher’s gas tank.

But we rented a church anyway. We hired a minister. And we did it. We really did it.

We got married.

We went to Charleston for our honeymoon. It was all we could afford. It was the world’s most basic honeymoon. No frills. Cheap motel. Crappy part of town.

We wandered through the Holy City, arm in arm. I was 10-foot tall and bulletproof. I was still a child, but all grown up.

You improved me. Before you, I was a victim of suicide. A poor kid. I was a middle-school dropout, a construction worker. But I was married now, and marriage washes away a host of inadequacies.

But on the streets of Charleston, I kept wondering what the future would bring. I wondered, would we have kids? Would they have red hair like me? Or brown hair like you? Would I ever find a job that made my you proud? Or would I be a screw-up forever?

Would we be lucky enough to see old age together? Would I survive long enough to be an old man?

My life had been painted with death. And something happens to the psyches of kids who endure too much death. We know too much, too soon.

At a young age, I had lost a parent. I had been abused. I had known financial insecurity. I had this idea I’d never make it to 40. My father died shortly after 40. Wouldn’t the same happen to me?

So I kept wondering, as we walked down Broad Street, hooking arms, what’s going to happen to us? Am I allowed to be this happy? Is God going to pull the rug from beneath my feet and laugh when I fall on my everlasting aspirations? What happens next?

But I was overthinking it. What happened next was, we ate at a nice restaurant that night and drained the kitty. What happened next was, I spent my last $100 on a carriage ride downtown.

What happened was we’re still here, still going. Twenty years later. And I think you have made me the gladdest man on Earth, Jamie Dietrich.

What happened is that we have proven that preacher and all his toadies wrong. We proved that you can indeed live on love.

And if you’ll pardon my French, it’s a pretty damn good living.