On marriage

Perhaps at nineteen years of marriage you could say a few things.

I could make it sound like I’ve got all the answers and we’ve sorted out the secrets to a perfect marriage, but if I’m honest? Each year we look at each other and quietly acknowledge, “I didn’t think we’d make it this far.”

A thousand clichés race through my mind – dating, sex, romance, fun, laughter. Forgiveness and honesty and compromise, and all the things you’ve read over and over, and maybe it’s mattered but maybe it hasn’t. It would be easy, you know, to offer up a formula or advice scribbled on a sticky on your fridge.

I cannot count how often we wanted to walk away. Most of the first year. Then during years of unemployment and Len’s profound health crisis. There were months when the words “I didn’t sign up for this” echoed in my mind like a screaming banshee. I was a blind fool agreeing to ‘in sickness and health’, assuming sickness would wait until we were in our 80s and had lived our full, beautiful life.
I know only this: I get to choose. I choose to stay. I choose to go. I choose yes, or I choose no.

Every day. Sometimes many times per day. A million times over the span of nineteen years I chose to stay, and it was my choice to make. A million times he chose the same, and it was his choice to make. At any moment either one of us could have made a different choice. In many moments, perhaps we almost did.

Also: keep looking to Jesus. If nothing else, keep your eyes on him. Not because he promises a picture-perfect life without pain or regret or challenge or sorrow, but because he is Emmanuel. In his presence you can make your choice, whatever it must be.
The longer I am married the less I know and the more astonished I am by the ties that bind. For today – this very moment – I choose yes.

May the Lord make me faithful.