24 Years

24 Years ago, I sat on my parents’ porch in the early morning hours, wondering if I knew what in the world I was doing.  A few hours later I was wearing a beautiful white dress and walking down the aisle to marry the love of my life.  We were two kids in love, ready for adventure!  24 years ago, we were quite clueless as to what the word “marriage” really meant.

We are no longer clueless.

For 24 years I have looked at the same face when I have gone to sleep.  For 24 years, I have seen the same face come home at night.  We have had 24 years of rejoicing, fighting, laughing, and arguing with the same person. 24 years of changes and more changes. Changing houses, changing cars, changing employees, changing churches. For almost 22 of those years, we have had children in our home and have prayed, cried, and cheered as they grow into adulthood.  For 24 years we have run a business together, sometimes disagreeing about how to spend money, who to hire, and how many hours to work.  24 years of making tough decisions and hard choices — but always discussing them together.  For 24 years, he has tried to love me and I have tried  to submit to his loving leadership.  Both of us have failed often in our biblical roles, but we dust ourselves off and continue to try. 24 years of talking about our feelings, talking about our problems, sharing our hearts, being careful not to leave any grievances fester for too long. Some of those years have been tougher than others. We don’t always agree. Although, ironically enough, the older we get the less we argue.  For some funny reason, we are becoming more alike as we age. For 24 years we have found marvelous friendship in each other.  24 years of love and passion with just one person. 24 years of completely trusting one another in the vows made so long ago. For 24 years, we knew that neither of us was going anywhere, no matter how bad it got.  Sure, sometimes, one of us would angrily cry out “I guess I’ll just leave!” but we both knew it would never happen. Not in a million years. For 24 years we have watched each other grow older and fatter and, yet, it has not diminished our love for each other. In fact, if anything, we love each other more. We are so far from perfect and yet, somehow, we love, forgive, and grow closer.

How can this be?  It is the marvelous mystery of marriage. What a wonderful gift from our Creator!

Tomorrow, I may, once again, feel really frustrated about something my husband does or says. But for today, I feel tremendously blessed.