Today my husband and I celebrate 10 years of wedded bliss. Granted, not every single moment has been filled with bliss, ("for the 87th time, can you please turn off the light in the closet!!???") but it has been a ride filled with so many good things I couldn't have known to even dream up the day we stood at the altar together and said "I do."
As much as you love someone, there just simply isn't a way for you to know what various adventures the years ahead will bring. Some days you will be so mad at each other and wonder how this could have possibly been God's pick for you; others will be full of so much pure joy you think your heart might burst. But we didn't say yes to our feelings, we said yes to each other. We said "yes" to doing life together, with the Lord at the center, regardless of how peaceful or difficult it might be at times.
And sometimes, it's really stinking difficult.
In God's kind and gracious way, He put some pretty awesome examples of faithful marriages in my path. One of them being my own parents. If anyone loved "for better, for worse, in sickness and in health, for richer, for poorer," it was them. Times of plenty and times of want, lost jobs, a house burned to the ground, years of drawn-out sickness and disease ending in death, depression and sorrow - they weathered the storms together. And their secret? Well, it's not really a secret at all. Their marriage lasted until "death do us part" because they held tightly to the commitment to anchor their life on the Rock regardless of how hard the wind blew. Was it always perfect? Absolutely not. Did God sustain them in His faithful way even still? You better believe it.
So in today's world, where divorce is rampant and fewer and fewer people hold the marriage covenant in high esteem, we celebrate. We celebrate the miracle that is God keeping two broken and selfish people together when it would have been so easy to just walk away already. We celebrate the ways we have grown and stretched and learned from our mistakes. We celebrate the ways God has gently changed our hearts and perspectives and helped us to see our spouse the way He does.
'Cuz let me tell you, I am messed up. Justin is messed up. And dying to self each day is no picnic. But when Paul said in Ephesians 5, "Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord," and "Husbands love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her," it wasn't a mean joke about something wholly unattainable. Difficult? Yes. Unattainable? NO. Because of Christ.
Let's be honest. Without Jesus, I'd probably already be divorced because sometimes I just want things my way. I would have already said a lot of things I was thinking that would have cut my husband to the core and convinced him he'd married a psychopath. I might have broken a few lamps and thrown dinner in his face. Or just refused to make dinner at all.
But, Jesus.
He really is so patient and kind with us, isn't He? I flipped through some pictures this morning of Justin and me through the years, and it brought back so many memories of things I had forgotten. We have served on mission trips and in our church together, we have hosted people in our home together, we have traveled together, become parents together, lost loved ones together, laughed and cried together, cheered each other on and listened to each other's pity parties. (Well, he's probably done that more than I have...)
We are absolutely still a work in progress, but this relationship only gets sweeter and sweeter as the years go by. 10 years and 2 kids later, we are (hopefully) wiser than before, gentler, more understanding, better at listening before we speak, and quicker to forgive and reconcile. We've learned different doesn't necessarily mean wrong, but sometimes it's just easier to buy two tubes of toothpaste. We've learned that as long as there's coffee and salsa in our house we'll probably survive, and that when our house is full of people to share it with, we're the happiest. We have grown in our love for Jesus, recognized how broken we are without Him, and how much we still have to learn. Marriage is hard. Marriage is sweet. Marriage is refining, Marriage is a gift. And because of Jesus, marriage is also a miracle.