Today is my 25th anniversary of marriage to an amazing, godly woman. What a wonderful privilege to have journeyed half my life with Kim. She is my sunshine and my moon, the light in my life and the essence that keeps me sustained through the twists of the journey of life. I love her more deeply than on our wedding day….but I probably am not what the young would call the feeling of “being in love.” What? you say with shock and horror….you, Carl are celebrating your wedding anniversary and you have the temerity to say you aren’t in love?
Well, no, that’s not what I said…I said I don’t have what the young….maybe better to say “what our modern culture” claims as the feeling of ‘being in love.’ C.S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity explains this well. 
“Being in love is a good thing, but it is not the best thing. There are many things below it, but there are also things above it. You cannot make it the basis of a whole life. It is a noble feeling, but it is still a feeling….But of course ceasing to begin love’ need not mean ceasing to love. Love in a second sense—love as distinct from “being in love” is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced (in Christian marriages) the grace which both parents ask, and receive, from God.”
Later he writes, “People get from books the idea that if you married the right person you may expect to go on ‘being in love’ forever. As a result, when they find they are not, they think this proves they have made a mistake and are entitled to a change—not realizing that, when they have changed, the glamour will presently go out of the new love just as it went out of the old one. In this department, as in every other, thrills come at the beginning and do not last.”
Screwtape, the old master demon, wrote about this to his young nephew Wormwood. He explains how, through the 1800-1900s, the demons have worked to ruin the idea of a Christian marriage, of the idea of one man and one woman. 
Our culture has a perverted view of love, as is evidenced by a host of TV shows and movies. Usually the perversion centers on this fleeting concept of “being in love.” Wrongly, the world then ties this feeling to sex, something God made holy between one woman and one man (it isn’t for nothing that He describes the act of intercourse as producing one flesh, and that one flesh meant for all of life), but something the world cheapens. By linking things only to “being in love,” humans work to cover up their sexual activity with seemingly anyone. Of course, today, I wonder if love is even on the radar of those who simply think sex is some random thing, sort of a bodily function.
My covenant with Kim was made understanding that our relationship was something made to endure, and now as we move into the next 25 years, it has endured through our conscious awareness of love being this deep reality. God’s mystery of binding us into one flesh continues as we walk in His ways. There are hard times, struggles, but the journey is a joy, a joy of deep love for one another.
Happy Anniversary my dear darling wife. I can’t wait to enjoy one more day with you….for as many days as He gives us.