It has been a long time since I heard those words spoken over me and a young lady who, in looking back at the photographs, seemed so young that I can scarce believe that her parents ever let her out of the house, let alone agreed to let me drag her off to my cave! A long time. Twenty years to be exact (come May 13th, that is).
Yes indeed, my dear wife Mary and I have been together in holy matrimony for two decades. While I remember a lot that has happened in the intervening years, I still struggle to understand where all the time has gone. I certainly don’t feel like I have been married for half as many years as I have been alive. Perhaps that is part of the blessing that makes marriage work, that time does seem to have flown by when you look back at it.
We certainly haven’t accomplished all that we may have dreamed would be the case in our first twenty years of being one flesh, but we have accomplished a lot. In two decades we have grown from practically being two kids (I was twenty, Mary twenty-one) playing house to become two adults who are in the process of raising a wonderful soon-to-be-seventeen young woman, who have seen our careers flourish, and have seen us develop relationships with family and friends that worth more than could ever be quantified.
The greatest thing about being together for twenty years in a successful marriage is the realization that in one person you have a lover and a companion who knows you more intimately than anyone else and continues to love you, ‘warts and all’, as the saying goes. You have a friend who understands you and is there for you and helps you experience life to its fullest. You also have someone you can fight with and argue with and disagree with who is willing to work with you to resolve issues to the benefit of both parties because you are both invested in the same thing: a life together.
I am beyond grateful for the blessing that Mary has been in my life. More than twenty years ago when I realized that I wanted to marry her I believed that she was a gift from God…I feel this every bit as strongly today. More so actually, because I can look back and see how she has been a pillar of strength, a shoulder to cry on, a person to laugh with and live passionately with, a mother to our daughter, a voice of reason, an inspiration….I can see all the things she has done to complete me and to make life one helluva fulfilling experience.
I love you dearly, Mary and I truly look forward to the next twenty years and hopefully another twenty beyond that (I’m in no hurry to pass on!). It is my sincerest wish to face the adventure of the 40’s with you and so much more, being the man you need me to be and allowing you to be the woman that you want to be. And I look forward to continuing to work towards those dreams that have not yet been realized with you as my partner. Happy 20th Anniversary!
I am posting this early because my wife and I are off Tuesday morning to our favorite Inn for 4 days and 3 nights of rest and relaxation and ‘us’ time. I look forward to catching up with all of you when I return, until then I hope that each and every one of you has a wonderful week.
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
~William Shakespeare, Sonnet 116
