My husband and I celebrated our wedding anniversary a few days ago - twenty nine years (we were all of 5 years old when we got married). I remember waking up that morning in March, my mother's home transformed from its typically peaceful existence to one full of life and the flurry of activity that is found in the home of every bride on her wedding morning. Excitement laced the air. The butterflies in my stomach refused to rest. I couldn't eat, didn't want to eat, but mother knows best and somehow I got down a piece of toast with grape jelly.
I don't remember what time I awoke or how many hours I'd actually slept, but I do remember sitting on the edge of the bed in a room that my sister and I had shared once upon a time. As I looked out the window, snowflakes began to fall. My heart sank. It wasn't supposed to snow on my wedding day! The sky should be a clear and brilliant blue holding the sun, warm and inviting! But I'm getting married today! I thought. Let the snow come! It's my wedding day. Who cares if it snows? I closed my eyes, took some deep breaths, tried to calm my nerves. Within minutes, I felt warmth on my face as light seeped through my closed lids. I opened my eyes to a brilliant sun and clear skies - as if God had momentarily forgotten the importance of the day, and upon remembering, swept the clouds away with a flip of His hand, unveiling the most beautiful blue a sky has ever been. A huge smile spread across my face. I felt His happiness, not just mine own.
What I didn't know at that point in time was the true nature of marriage. You can't know. People tried to talk us out of it - most notably, my then future mother-in-law. She didn't try to talk Marc out of it, just me. I would smile at her. I was in love with her son and her words couldn't faze me. We'd postponed our wedding six months for her sake. She was that worried about us. We were young. We knew that, so we talked to a number of people older than us, wiser than us, people who worked with married couples. We wanted to be stopped if it was a bad idea. Each of our counselors grilled us. We answered every question honestly, and without fail, each counselor gave us a green light.
So the day came. After a fifteen month engagement, we stood at the alter and said our vows. We thought we were in love that day. We didn't have a clue.
Love isn't for sissies or the faint of heart. Love is for fighters. Everything in this world works to destroy love. According to statistics, 50% let it. My heart breaks each time I hear of a divorce. Life is hard. It's full of road blocks and U-turns and tragedies and doubts and disappointments and pain and misunderstandings and misconceptions and stress upon stress. . . and . . . and . . . and . . . But God in His infinite wisdom works these things together for good for those who love Him. The very things that tear couples apart are the very things that can bring them closer if only they would fight - not each other - but fight together for their marriage.
I love my husband very, very much. I couldn't say that after twenty nine years if we hadn't fought through a lot of junk: junk in ourselves, junk in each other, junk that life threw at us by way of jobs, family, friends, kids, schools, etc. We've had to learn to be humble before each other and to trust. It's not an easy path, but if you give up too soon, you miss out - big time. Five, ten, even twenty years, aren't enough. Marriage was made for a lifetime because anything less than that doesn't cut it. It's incomplete. Unfinished. Shallow. It takes a lifetime to learn what it means to love someone - to really love them - through to the very depths of your soul. I'm not at the lifetime mark yet. By my count, my husband and I still have a good thirty-ish years to go. I can't imagine how I can possibly love him more, but then, that's what I thought on my wedding day . . .
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