Skip to main content

54, 25 - How Did They Do It?‏

Today my parents' are celebrating their 54th wedding anniversary. Every year my sister and I tell them they should go out just the two of them but they insist on us accompanying them to dinner, usually at Olive Garden. All day long I've been marveling at that - 54 years together. They've raised two daughters, lost four parents, and prayed in hospital waiting rooms while waiting to hear if surgeries were successful. My mother drove my father to daily radiation treatments for cancer. After all of this, 54 years of the ebb and flows of life, they still hold hands as they walk together, their lives linked together as tightly as their clasped fingers.

I have friends who are also celebrating their wedding anniversary today. Twenty-five years and three children together, one of which has been a special-needs child since before her first birthday when she suffered a brain infection. Through all the struggles of that challenging life, they are still in love. Last fall they took a trip of a lifetime to Italy, taking turns doing the things each wanted to do - museums for her, cooking classes for him. She recently posted wedding photos on Facebook, photos of two people so in love on a day so full of hope. The photos brought tears to my eyes.

How do people do it - how do they weather the storms of life and still want to wake up next to the same person 25 or 54 years later? My marriage had little to no difficulties, relative to what others have gone through.  The most we suffered through were low-paying jobs, then better paying jobs that were disliked, self employment to escape dislike jobs, cars that were unreliable and barely got us from point A to point B - that was it. But yet, we didn't last. We didn't get past our 14th anniversary and we marked that one by removing our wedding rings, never to put them back on again.

Maybe it takes a love being tested to make it last. Maybe it isn't until a life-threatening medical condition threatens the chance of another morning next to the person you love to make you appreciate what they mean to you that makes you hold tight to your linked lives. Maybe a strong marriage is forged in the challenge of life with a child changed forever by something out of your control.

I don't know what the answer is exactly. I may never know. Today I'm just thankful that I have these two examples to show me what marriage can be and to remind me that there are happily ever afters and maybe, just maybe, there's one out there for me.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Five Minute Friday: Roots

Lisa-Jo Baker (lisajobaker.com) hosts a weekly event on her blog called "Five Minute Friday". The rules are 1. Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking. 2. Link back here and invite others to join in. 3. And then absolutely, no ifs, ands or buts about it, you need to visit the person who linked up before you & encourage them in their comments. Seriously. That is, like, the rule. And the fun. And the heart of this community.. So here's my first try at this. Today's topic was Roots. Roots – I think about my grandparents who lived on a farm until my grandfather’s diabetes worsened and they moved to a town with a hospital nearby. My father still says he wished he could have kept that farm. I think of my grandmother who was a widow for 20 years. Every year she would stand over my PaPa’s grave, wishing she was with him. I think of my parents, a product of those grandparents, how hard my father worked to put 2 girls through...

Five Minute Friday: Expect

Five Minute Friday is a writing event that has writers spending five minutes writing on the same topic and then sharing them at  http://katemotaung.com/five-minute-friday/ . This week's word is Expect.   I'm going to admit something. When I pray, I expect God to do what I ask. I'd like to think that is a sign of faith but in some ways, it is a sign of arrogance, like I know what is best for me. I picture him up in heaven like the above photo, signalling to the angels and saying like a benevolent Captain Picard, "Make it so." I never stop to think about what's right or worse, what's God's will, I just ask away and expect to be granted my wish. I guess that means I see God as more of a fairy godmother than my heavenly father. It doesn't matter if it is little things like, "Please make the bathtub faucet quit leaking" or "Please make my aunt well." I expect my prayer to be answered. And for things like "Please send...

Five Minute Friday: Time

Five Minute Friday is a writing event that has writers spending five minutes writing on the same topic and then sharing them at http://katemotaung.com/five-minute-friday/ . This week's word is Time. Sometimes time feels like this, like we are in it. Standing inside it, watching life pass by. It is so easy to get stuck in a time - in our pain, in our hurt. We hear the ache tick away in our head like a giant clock. Time, instead, is a gift. More time with family, more time to accomplish goals, more time to see the world. When you are hurting, it seems like time takes forever. One day turns into another day, turns into another day. When we hate a job, the five days of time that make up a work week seem to go on forever. But those five days are also a gift. Because these days, a job is not a guarantee. I want to see time as gift, not as a chore. I want to be on the other side of it, wishing there was more of it. Making the most of every hour, minute, and second instead of...