21 years ago

Today is my anniversary.  21 years ago today I was doing up my hair and making up, putting on a fancy white dress, posing for pictures.  I walked down the aisle and committed to spend my life with my high school boyfriend.  The one with the long hair and questionable fashion sense.

(sorry couldn't get my scanner to work for a wedding picture but I just love this terrible picture of the 2 of us from high school which is already on my computer)

We couldn't have known then what life would hold for us.  That we would have a baby 4 years later and not be able to have any more, that John would spend almost his entire career self employed, that we would adopt 10 year after having our first child, help start an Anglican church of all things and love it, go to Africa.  We probably could have predicted that we might have financial struggles since we married so young but could not have known we would also have financial triumphs and be living as well as we are considering where we started out.

What is probably most surprising about a long lasting marriage is that through the ups and downs, the trials and the triumphs, not to mention the day to day doldrums, I love my husband more today than I could have even imagined possible 21 years ago.  What we have here after 21 years together is a life, a life I love.  It is something that cannot be build overnight.  It is build every day, one step at a time through the good and the bad, sickness and health, while going about your days.

Thank you John for 21 wonderful years of marriage.  Thank you God for bringing me such a wonderful man and being present in our marriage all these years.

But I thought...

Last Sunday I rallied the family for a little cleaning time.  I assigned my husband the vacuuming duty as I have since day one of our marriage when I informed him vacuuming must be men's work because I sweat when I do it.  I have vacuumed many times since becoming a full time homemaker but anytime we take a team cleaning approach vacuuming duty always reverts back to John.  I cleaned the bathrooms while he vacuumed and then went to mop the hardwood floors and kitchen floor when he was done.  As I began I came across crumbs, and then more and then it became apparent that he hadn't vacuumed the hard floors at all but just hit the area rug in the living room and Isabelle's bedroom and then did the downstairs.  At first it was funny, but then I started feeling put off and I came to the conclusion that he didn't really want to vacuum and he purposely did a crappy job yet never told me he didn't want to vacuum.  I was upset that rather than telling me the truth he would just do the crappy job.  I mean, if he told me ahead then I would have just done it myself and it would have been fine.  I was in cleaning mode and wouldn't have minded if he wasn't.  However, when he does a crappy job and now I have to re-do the whole thing when I wasn't expecting to then that is just mean.  And now I am mad.  So I inform him I am mad that he would do such a crappy job on purpose when he could have just told me that he didn't want to vacuum.  He looks at me like I have totally lost my mind, like he has entered an alternate universe.  Since the truth was that he didn't know I usually vacuumed all the hard floors upstairs and while he wasn't in the mood to do his typical detailed vacuuming job he was more than happy to help out with the vacuuming.  It was not some secret message to me about how he was bitter about having to help out.  Although now that I was attacking him for nothing he was feeling a little bitter.

But I thought...

I must admit this is definitely not the first time I have been mad at him because I jumped to a conclusion before finding out the truth.  And the bummer is that even though he has done nothing wrong I am now all hot under the collar and it takes me time to come down from my high and mighty, albeit wrong, location and restore communication.

You would think I would learn. 

I have also been the victim of the "I thought" attack having my words or actions misinterpreted by friends and family members and getting attacked for something I never did and having to try to explain to a person that what they think happened did not actually happen.  I am sorry they feel hurt but I can't really be sorry for something I did not in fact do.  It is amazing how tightly we will hold on to our "I thought".  Sometimes those "I thought" fights have completely fractured relationships.

This week I was reading in John (the book of the bible not my husband) chapter 7, where Jesus has been in Judea and the priests and Pharisees are wanting to condemn him.  There is a bunch of talk about the fact that they know the Messiah will come from Bethlehem and from the line of David.  This man comes from Galilee and everyone knows nothing good comes from there. 

v9 "Nicodemus, who had gone to Jesus earlier and who was one of their own number, asked, "Does our law condemn anyone without first hearing him to find out what he is doing?"  They replied, "Are you from Galilee, too?  Look into it, and you will find that a prophet does not come out of Galilee."

(Ha ha, knowing the truth don't you think that interaction is a little comical?)

The rulers "thought" they knew the truth and there was no reason to ask or confirm the obvious truth that Jesus could not possibly be the Christ.  They made their decision, came to a conclusion and condemned Jesus.

I wonder if after the resurrection any of them were saying, "but I thought..."

Our thoughts are powerful things. They can take us to new heights and down to new lows.  I often hear God speak to me in a thought but just as easily I can be fooled by lies within my thoughts.

In 2 Cor it says, "We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ."

To control our thoughts rather than let them control us.  Oh, I dream to teach this to my children.  Our minds, they are big places.  Too often we think we are in control of our own minds only to find out we are being controlled by them.

As I have "thought" on this topic for a couple weeks now I have been amazed at how often I have seen people respond to something based on their "I thought".  It has really changed my perspective on things and on how I am interacting and what truth I am telling myself.

Today at church I was faced with a situation that I have in the past "thought" and gotten mad about but today I gave those thoughts to the Lord and let the truth settle on me and was able to avoid a totally unnecessary confrontation but instead spend my time doing what I was made to do, worship the Lord.

What have you "thought" this week?

That is Marriage

A couple years ago I was working in a childcare center.  One morning I had a rotation into the quiet baby area with a young mom who was also working there and we had the opportunity to chat while bouncing babies.  We soon discovered that we shared the same wedding anniversary although many years apart.  She was coming up on her first anniversary as I was approaching my 18th.  After sharing a desire to make her marriage work despite the example of her mother's 3 failed marriages she looks at me and asks me how I did it.  What is the secret of being happily married for 18 years?  She then stops talking and waits for me to impart some great wisdom upon her.  No pressure.  Just sum it up in the next 15 minutes before we rotate to different parts of the room. 

I have thought often about this young woman in the past couple years and her question. What is the secret?  How do I answer that question?  Why do some couples stay together, sometimes despite huge obstacles, and others give up without even trying?

This week John and I celebrate 20 years of marriage.  More than half our lives have been spent together.  Every significant thing that has happened to us, every insignificant thing that has happened to us since we were seniors in high school has been experienced together.

I have been thinking about our wedding vows; for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health.  Check, check. Check, check. Check, check.  In 20 years we have experienced it all. 

There have been wonderful times of joy, the births of our children, fun vacations, and just moments of happiness simply being together, laughing and experiencing the dailiness of life.  But there have been bad times, dealing with infertility, job loss, car problems, parenting frustrations, big and small fights over things that mattered and things that didn't.

We have been sick, I have complained over my many health issues until I wanted to kick myself to the curb.  John has suffered through many injuries along with sickness and discovered why his wife didn't go into the medical field.  We became experts on the subjects of ear infections as we spent much of Jake's first year at the doctor.  And we can tell you far more details than your health teacher ever thought to share about exactly how babies are made...or aren't.  But then we all experienced improved health together through nutritional eating and dairy free living.  We ran together, hiked and biked together and were able to be more physically active during the second half of our marriage than the first half.

And while some days it seems like we have only experienced the poorer side of our marriage the truth is we have had both.  We certainly started at the bottom but we aren't there anymore.  We have made some very good choices over the years and some very bad choices.  We are better off than we were 20 years ago and look forward to making more good choices than bad in the next 20 years when we will find ourselves facing retirement.

It is life.  It is our life.

This weekend John and I went away to celebrate our anniversary.  We love to get away and have gone several times over the years having a wonderful time enjoying each others company without having to worry about our children or the responsibilities of life.  This year we went up to Duluth where we had spent a couple nights on our honeymoon.  The first time we were broke so while we walked along the shore of Lake Superior and enjoyed watching the lift bridge go up and down we really didn't do anything else.  This time we were able to tour the Glenshen Mansion, eat at Grandma's restaurant and still walk along the shore of Lake Superior.  We really did have a lovely time.

BUT

John had worked almost non-stop in the days leading up to this trip literally working all night long 2 nights in a row.  While I voiced my concern he would be no fun because of how exhausted he was he assured me if he could sleep on the drive up he would be fine. We were both looking forward to the trip and decided to pretend that was true.   And for the most part he was fine.  But we had a hard time really connecting because the truth was that he was tired.  And I didn't sleep well so then I was tired, and then there was hours of traffic, and somehow the second day was not quite as lovely as the first day.

BUT

That is life.  That is marriage.  It is hard to look at a woman who has been married for 1 year and express to her that they joy of 20 years comes from both the ups and the downs of a lifetime together.  That I look back and cherish the bad as much as the good.  Each experience, good and bad, goes into making a marriage.  It isn't about any one moment but about every moment coming together.   And as we go through it we become more and more a part of each other.

Not every trip is wonderful and has us floating home on a cloud.  I would love it if they were.  But then how would we ever learn that when John has been working 48 hours straight the best thing to do is stay home?  Plus you can't anticipate everything that will happen.  How could we have known that it would take us 3+ hours to get out of Duluth on Sunday afternoon because of very poorly organized road construction detours?  Life happens.  Some days you choose to make lemonade and some days you just suck the lemon.

Through it all, the good and the bad, the ups and the downs, the joys and the sorrows I am so glad I stuck it out and so glad to have married a man willing to stick it out with me.  There is no one else I would rather experience a lifetime with than John.

And as we look forward to our anniversary tradition of attending the State Fair (another thing we did on our honeymoon) I will be sure John gets lots of sleep in the days leading up to it.