Celebrations
There is much to celebrate these days. I turned 47 last Thursday, my sister and mother have both had birthdays in recent weeks, and yesterday, my wife and I looked at each other and could hardly believe 25 years have passed since I watched her walk down the aisle and say all manner of wonderful things to me as we stood before God and got married.
Yesterday was our 25th wedding anniversary.
After I'd gone to pick up the kids from Beauty and the Beast rehearsal, when the three of us walked in the door, there stood the bride, in her wedding dress, looking as if she had just stepped out of a time capsule. The dress still fit, the love was still in her eye, and the kids both caught the giddy mood, delighted to look back with us. Anjie said she'd been wanting to put it back on for a long time, and this just seemed like the day.
Lots of water under the bridge since then, but our conversation over our anniversary dinner at one of Seattle's better restuarants was about the future, about who we wanted to be together, and how, in the end, it all comes down to somehow serving the wonder and glory of God. Life is huge, overwhelming, dense, ridiculously mysterious, and the journey of a relationship of 25 years is perhaps one of God's more efficient ways of keeping us on our knees. We assume that the next 25 years will bring more of the same, but our prayer is that we somehow take our faith and our lives to new heights of service and joy and worship.
These days, a marriage of this kind of longevity is near miraculous to many people, and it was my great pleasure to tell almost everybody I could find yesterday that it was my 25th. The looks I got ranged from awe to pure disbelief. But in most of the responses there was a wistfulness, almost as if folks wished for a world where marriages like that could be true. But then, we'd go back to business as usual, and they'd wish me well, as if I were a foreigner traveling back to a country they knew they would never get to visit.
Then there's Amy's graduation coming up, and Daniel's 16th birthday, and Anjie's birthday...the list of April-May craziness just goes on. But what great days these are, reminders that all of life is rich, even in it's pain and sin and destruction. The psalmist wonders where in creation he can go and be away from God. Thank God the answer to that is "nowhere."
...dancing to the music...
10:39:11 AM
