Today (August 7, 2012), Whitney and I celebrate our
thirteenth wedding anniversary. I have a few thoughts...
1. Thirteen
years is a long time.
Assuming a normal life expectancy, thirteen years is about a
sixth of my life. So, in one sense, thirteen years is a long time. When we got
engaged, I remember trying to conceptualize what a lifetime commitment looked
like. It wasn’t something I could fathom.
Long-term commitments were not something with which I had
experience. Of the eight schools I attended, my average tenure was 2-3 years. By
the time I was 12, we had lived in eight homes.
And it scared me because I enjoyed the change of scenery.
That’s a permissible personality quirk when you’re transferring schools or
forwarding your mail, but it’s not a trait that should manifest itself in one’s
marriage.
After we got engaged, I looked at other marriages in our
church and was overwhelmed as I contemplated the marriages of older saints.
Some had been married three or five or even ten years! I don’t know if I had
even the ability to contemplate a thirteen-year marriage.
2. Thirteen
years is a short time.
Now that I stand on the other side of thirteen years, it’s
somewhat cliché but I’ll say it anyway: it’s gone by quickly.
I know, I know: time always goes by quickly. But marriage—a
good marriage—goes by quickly in some unique ways. Marriage quick is different
than children-aging quick or getting-old quick.
In a good marriage you realize how much
more you want to get to know this person you married. And you’ve spent time
getting to know them, but in comparison with how much you want to know them and
how much more time you need with them, the time you’ve spent with them seems
like no time at all.
And then as you think you’ve finally gotten to get a handle
on who they are. . .they change! Not always
in major, drastic ways but in smaller, subtle, beautiful ways that increase
your delight in them.
When we got married, neither Whitney nor I drank coffee. In
fact, we were somewhat obnoxious about it. One day, several years into our
marriage, she became a social coffee drinker.
I was shocked. I had married a non-coffee drinker. Who was
this strange and fascinating creature that drank coffee (on rare occasions and
extremely doctored up)? She was different than the person I had said “I do”
too.
That experience provided me the first glimpse into a
remarkable truth: my wife is not a static
creature. Pursuing oneness with her is not like chasing after a stationary
target. It’s not like shooting an arrow at a target painted on a wall. It’s
like affixing a target on a particle of light hurtling through the universe and
trying to pursue it at a speed just slightly faster than the speed of light.
You slowly get closer and closer and then the particle passes close to a planet
and is bent ever so slightly and alters it’s path.
One of the joys of life with Whitney is the ability to
pursue her and pursue her and follow her as she evolves and changes. Thirteen
years is too short a time to catch up with my shooting particle of light, but I’m
making progress and enjoying a fascinating journey through the universe with
her.
3.
God
is gracious.
What will the next thirteen years look like? I don’t know,
nor will I presume on God’s grace continuing to be manifested in the way I’d
like. As James warns us:
Come now, you who say, “Today
or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and
trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What
is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then
vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or
that.” As
it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the
right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin (Jas 4:13-17).
The point of all this is to acknowledge God’s graciousness
to Whitney and me over the past thirteen years. If God were to call me home
tomorrow, I’d have no right to complain—but, all the same, I’d enjoy some more
time here with my bride, chasing my beautiful particle of light and joy! Happy
Anniversary, Whitney!
Happy anniversary! Glad to hear that Whitney has matured into a coffee drinker...of sorts:)
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