This weekend my husband and I had our 17th wedding anniversary. We dated for three years before we were married so we have actually been together for 20 years. How in the world did I get so old?!?! I was 16 when we met and even though a recent glance in the mirror reminds me I am not THAT young anymore, I certainly do not feel old enough to have a teenage daughter and a husband that just turned 40!
But time HAS marched on from that first fall day back in 1989 when I met John. He was 20 at the time and was a friend of a friend of mine. I was sick the day we met, and looked terrible. My nickname in junior high and high school was Andi (I was in a rebellious stage and wanted to drive my mother crazy, taking a "boy" named seemed a good way to go), so JD (as was his nickname at the time, there were four other "Johns" in the group he hung out with) thought he was stopping by another guys house when our friend Chris told him he needed to help me close a storm window that was stuck in my bedroom.
JD says he remembers thinking, "why can't this guy Andy muscle his own window closed?" When he got to my house he realized why "Andi" could not. I remember thinking, when I first saw him standing in my living room, "hmm, he is kind of cute. Not the out of my league too cute but the right amount of cute that maybe one day I could marry a guy like that." I know, I KNOW!!! I was 16, teenage girls are crazy (why do you think I am so scared to have one in my house).
So anyway I knew how bad I was looking, cause I was feeling worse, so I wrote him off and figured I would never see him again. A few days later when I was feeling better and returned to school, my friend Chris said that JD had asked about me, and more than once over the past few days. I was shocked, but I told Chris that it was ok to give him my number and he could call me. Little did I know where that would lead!
17 years of marriage, 3 children, and a lifetime of for better's and for worse's. Marriage is a blessing and a challenge, a union and a dividing line, a long journey and a short sprint. A blessing because the two of you are now under a Holy Covenant of God, a challenge because it takes a lot of hard work and compromise to make it work. A union because two have now been made one, a dividing line because you are both now separated from the plight of the single man (married couples have few single friends and vice-versa, two different sets of life experiences). A long journey because this marriage deal is supposed to be for life, and a short sprint because it takes small burst of energy to get over the tough hills or through the rough valleys in the course of a marriage.
John and I did not spend our 17th wedding anniversary together this year. If you noticed at the top I said we "had" it but did not say "celebrated" it. John was in Kansas at a NASCAR race and I had a house full of children as my kids each invited a friend for a sleepover. John and I will do something special next weekend, when we celebrate our years together, but this past weekend was about doing things that make us each personally happy so that we can come together again and be happy together. We understand the idea that absence makes the heart grow fonder. Honestly, I was ready for him to be gone this weekend and I am more than ready for him to come home later on today. And I know after spending the weekend with his friend, he is going to be very ready to see me again too.
I do not have any wisdom-filled thoughts to share on how to make your marriage out of this world happy and last forever, but I can tell you that I have learned there will be moments of great joy and love, moments of great sorrow and frustration, and moments when you will question it all. In every one of those moments you must be on your knees in thanksgiving, in humility, and in prayer to our LORD. He is the only One I know that can carry a marriage through all the For Better's and For Worse's that life can throw us. A marriage is truly a blending of three lives and I for one am overjoyed that God is a part of my husband's and my marriage.
So..... what have been some of the "for better's" and some of the "for worse's" in your relationships. We have all been in relationships, not just ones of marriage, but also ones where we were/are partners with someone else. What have been the blessings and the challenges? When have you felt unity and when have you felt division? What has the scenery looked like as you pass along on your long journey and what about those short sprints that took your breath away (some in a good way and some, not so much)? When we take time to reflect, we realize that we are all filled with wisdom and understanding of what it takes to make a relationship work. Sometimes our judgment may become clouded but when we stop, really stop and think, we can remember what we have already learned.
My prayer for today is that we all take time to stop and reflect on the blessing and the challenge of relationships. I pray that we are moved with love for the one(s) we are in relationship with. I pray for marriages, and engagements, and budding relationships. I pray for warm hearts, loving words, and encouraging embraces. I pray for my husband and me, and the next 17 years or our marriage.
Until We Meet Again,
Drea
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