This weekend we will celebrate 29 years of marriage, so I thought I’d recycle this post from last year to remind myself of how blessed we are to be together in His hand.
Yesterday, when a friend heard that today was our twenty-eighth wedding anniversary, she said, “Sometime we’ll have to talk about how you made that happen…”
Yeah, so, that’s not exactly how I would characterize the last three decades.
I didn’t make anything happen. What I’ve made are numerous mistakes, countless swift judgments, and repeated poor choices. I started off strong — making the assumption that I knew how to be the best wife and mother ever, and I’ve spent the last twenty-eight years learning humility. I’m not an expert at communicating, loving, being patient, or putting someone else first. The fact that we’re celebrating twenty-eight years of marriage is not a reflection of our success, but a testimony to the grace and steadfastness of God.
We got married in our mid-twenties both of us having been touched by divorce. We had little in our savings, and I was still paying off student debt. During the first year, we lived at three different addresses — moving once when my job location changed and again when our son moved across the state. We changed jobs, too! My husband left teaching to be a full-time graduate student, and I switched from being a classroom teacher to a resource room teacher to a teacher in a residential school all before our first anniversary!
The stress of that first year alone might have done us in, but we were starry-eyed and convinced that we had won the lottery, and we were going to have the best life ever, even if we did have moments where insecurities led to worry that lead to yelling or tears or silence.
Because we did (and do) have those.
I remember one time, it had to be in the first month (or even week) of our marriage. Who even knew what started the squabble, but there we were in the kitchen, standing like two giant X’s, arms and legs splayed, chests out, voices raised, fingers pointing, spouting the kind of words we had never said toward one another before. It was terrifying. Ours was to be the perfect marriage — how could this happen? Doors were slammed; we fell to silence. And then we began to learn how to repair.
Undaunted, on the heels of that first year, before John had even finished his counseling degree and secured a salaried position, we decided that we’d like to start our family. Before our second anniversary, we’d moved again, he’d begun an internship, and we were expecting a baby!
Shortly after our third anniversary, he was settled into a position on a church staff, we had purchased our first home, and we were expecting another baby!
By our fifth anniversary, another was on the way!
It was the season of babies. We were elbow deep in diapers, blankies, and sippy cups. My husband worked long hours while I navigated days of feeding, reading, playing, and rocking. It was such a rich time what with all the cooing and snuggling, but the pure physicality of it all was exhausting. I was daily relieved when John joined me in the second-shift — the bathing, rough-housing, and putting to bed. We had established a partnership — he picked up where I left off and vice versa, but it wasn’t all hearts and flowers. Sometimes, utterly exhausted, I glared at him for arriving home five minutes late or for forgetting to pick up milk on the way home. Often, when he saw me hanging on by a frazzled thread, he pushed me out the door to catch a breath, take a break, or sit in silence. He’s always been quick to care for me — to see my needs often before I know I have them.
Throughout the years, we’ve shifted roles many times as we navigated five more moves, two more graduate degrees, various stages of parenting, and numerous professional positions. Recently, we’ve found the most cherished roles of our lives as Oma and Opa to our two precious granddaughters!
We’ve walked many roads together. We’ve attended weddings; we’ve been eye-witnesses to divorce. We’ve visited hospitals to welcome new born babies; we’ve been in the room for the last breath of life. We’ve sat in conference rooms and court rooms, in churches and synagogues. We’ve traveled to Austin, Boston, Chicago, and Detroit. We’ve even been to Canada, Africa, Israel, and Haiti! We’ve heard the best news and the worst news — all of this, together.
After twenty-eight years we’re still happy to sit across the table with one another and talk for hours or to share the couch as we watch a whole Netflix series in a weekend. We can power clean our little house together in a just over an hour or spend an entire day organizing one storage closet. We are comfortable talking and laughing while surrounded by friends and coworkers or simply drinking tea on our patio in the quiet of the morning, each reading our own book and saying absolutely nothing.
How did we make that happen? How did we live through more than 10,000 days of groceries and schedules and arguments and chaos and laundry and car repairs and taxes and track meets and homework and work functions and insurance claims and health challenges and road trips and still want to spend the next twenty-eight years together?
We didn’t make that happen. None of our choices have sustained us for twenty-eight years. Except maybe one,. We decided, way back in 1989, that if we got married, we would stay married. We would make our marriage vows to God, and He, we trusted, would make it happen. Though we were young and ill-equipped, we knew already that if we were going to have a life-long marriage, God would have to carry us in the palm of His hand.
And He has.
Even to your old age and gray hairs I am He, I am He who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.
Isaiah 46:4
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