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............................................................................................................................................................................................................In a store last week to buy a gift for the Cutest Community Organizer to Whom I Am Married. Small talk with two women working in the store:
Occasion? Anniversary.
How long? Thirty-eight years.
Wow. What’s the secret to your success?
I pause. How do you describe it all in thirty seconds?
“Put God first,” I reply. One woman nods. “Put Him first, then comes your spouse – put them before you.” I don’t take the time to go into all the detail of how I came to Christ about a week and a half after Barbra and I were married. Or how four years later, Barbra came to know Christ. Both of us raised in church – she Baptist, me Catholic – yet neither of us with a real relationship with God through Christ until each of us was about 24. I doubt if we would still be together were it not for that. After all, how can two know-it-alls live together without some Jesus-injected humility?
“Then practice courtesy with each other,” I said. “If we bump into each other in the hall, say ‘Excuse me;’ say ‘please,’ and ‘thank you.’ Don’t allow the familiarity of life together to let common courtesy go away. Another thing we do: if one of us is out and the other is home working on something and sloppy and grubby, we try to get dressed up somewhat before the other gets home. Can’t always do it, but we try. It’s just a courtesy.”
That’s what I told them. But there’s more that I didn’t think to say. I didn’t say that marriage is a commitment. That’s COMMITMENT. Some days the romance is gone: bills to pay, kids to raise, cars to fix, errands to run. Truth be told, there have been times that we haven’t always liked each other – at least the emotional spark has not been there. But the commitment remains. When you promise before God and man that you will stay together until death do you apart, sometimes that commitment is the only thing making it all go.
Ultimately, that’s what love is, is it not? A commitment. A decision.
Ah, but when the commitment gets you get past the problems-boredom-hurt feelings-anger-tedium-insensitivities-or whatever crisis it is, it’s great to fall in love all over again.
And as time goes on, it all gets better.
That’s why I admire people who have been happily married fifty, sixty years. Where the newlyweds are bright flickering flames, the long-married couples are the deep glow of long-burning coals.
Where young couples are poetry, dance, and song, for the old ones sometimes bad hearing and creaking joints drown out the party.
But through decades of caring for one another, putting each other first, being true to their commitments, it’s the old ones who are the really hot lovers.
I’m looking forward to that.
Happy anniversary, Barbra.
Occasion? Anniversary.
How long? Thirty-eight years.
Wow. What’s the secret to your success?
I pause. How do you describe it all in thirty seconds?
“Put God first,” I reply. One woman nods. “Put Him first, then comes your spouse – put them before you.” I don’t take the time to go into all the detail of how I came to Christ about a week and a half after Barbra and I were married. Or how four years later, Barbra came to know Christ. Both of us raised in church – she Baptist, me Catholic – yet neither of us with a real relationship with God through Christ until each of us was about 24. I doubt if we would still be together were it not for that. After all, how can two know-it-alls live together without some Jesus-injected humility?
“Then practice courtesy with each other,” I said. “If we bump into each other in the hall, say ‘Excuse me;’ say ‘please,’ and ‘thank you.’ Don’t allow the familiarity of life together to let common courtesy go away. Another thing we do: if one of us is out and the other is home working on something and sloppy and grubby, we try to get dressed up somewhat before the other gets home. Can’t always do it, but we try. It’s just a courtesy.”
That’s what I told them. But there’s more that I didn’t think to say. I didn’t say that marriage is a commitment. That’s COMMITMENT. Some days the romance is gone: bills to pay, kids to raise, cars to fix, errands to run. Truth be told, there have been times that we haven’t always liked each other – at least the emotional spark has not been there. But the commitment remains. When you promise before God and man that you will stay together until death do you apart, sometimes that commitment is the only thing making it all go.
Ultimately, that’s what love is, is it not? A commitment. A decision.
Ah, but when the commitment gets you get past the problems-boredom-hurt feelings-anger-tedium-insensitivities-or whatever crisis it is, it’s great to fall in love all over again.
And as time goes on, it all gets better.
That’s why I admire people who have been happily married fifty, sixty years. Where the newlyweds are bright flickering flames, the long-married couples are the deep glow of long-burning coals.
Where young couples are poetry, dance, and song, for the old ones sometimes bad hearing and creaking joints drown out the party.
But through decades of caring for one another, putting each other first, being true to their commitments, it’s the old ones who are the really hot lovers.
I’m looking forward to that.
Happy anniversary, Barbra.
Thanks Mike.....
ReplyDeleteThanks for this article of love and respect.
A very Happy Anniversary to you and your cute little community organizer. This made my day today.....GOD Bless you!
Shawn