Today is the day. It’s big enough that I interrupt my normal plan of Tuesday-Thursday posts. Today is my 24th wedding anniversary. Pretty darn amazing, and yet not at all unexpected.
See, 24 years ago, I met the most amazing woman and I thought to myself, “she could be the one I get to spend the rest of my life with.” So, we started investigating. Did we have things in common? Did we see a future together? Did we love God with the same passion? As each question (and others) got answered, it seemed more likely to each other that this was a relationship to pursue. Yet, one crucial concept had to be secured—-was she trustworthy? Of course, she was asking the same question.
Trustworthy? Not the most normal thing you’d expect to hear from a Christian pastor about key marriage issues to determine beforehand.
To me, it was paramount. See, when you marry someone, you are enacting a major Christian symbol about the promise of God to be faithful to his children forever. As with many other ideas or concepts from God, there is a deeper issue to His point. God calls us to be faithful and devoted for life in a marriage because He is faithful and devoted to us for life. Integrity is a core aspect of God’s being, His attributes. His rules or precepts always reflect his being, the “Who” He is.
This notion is born out in that the marriage is understood as a covenant, not merely a promise or agreement. A covenant is deeper, more demanding. In the ancient world, often Kings would seal a covenant by sacrificing an animal, scattering pieces of the animal, guts blood and all, on the ground. Then, in an elaborate ceremony, the two kings would walk among the pieces, stating the parts of the covenant and then declaring that if either side broke the covenant, then God should do to that person what had been done to the sacrificial animal.
Do you see it? Regardless of how beautiful this girl was…no matter how much we had in common or how she made me laugh or if I thought she was sexy….the point was did I believe her to be trustworthy? Would she do the very hard work of keeping her end of the covenant? And, she had to be asking the same question—regardless of if she thought I was a good man, would make a good salary or was handsome…even regardless of if she thought I loved God a lot—-would I put in the very hard work of keeping my promise, my covenant with her? By the time the summer of 1989 came, I knew solidly in my heart, that Kim was the kind of woman who kept her word.
Certainly it has not be easy—as I often say, nothing worth really doing is ever easy. We have had to put in the effort. We’ve had to navigate tough times, times when one of us let the other down. We’ve struggled when we’ve faced health and financial issues. There have been some seasons when our communication was harder than others. Yet, through it all, I never doubted, never even really thought about whether she would keep her word.
So, though 24 years is a significant time, its not too much of a surprise that we are here. We celebrate today in many ways, but at the deepest levels, the celebration is in the daily confirmation that we remain deeply in love, looking forward to the next days that God will give us, walking forward in the confidence of a trustworthy marriage.
You can have this too. You simply decide to be a man or woman of your word, not someone who bails when it gets tough, when you get upset at another person. You stay at the work, whether its your job, raising your kid, or dealing with a frustrating friend. When you tell someone you’ll be there, then you are. When someone expects you to call or email, you do it. When your friend needs a hand, you step in.
Want a marriage that goes the distance? Start by being the kind of person that others see will also go the distance. You can do it!!!