A Chilly Morning, an Evergreen Tree, and Twenty-Six Years of Grace

I remember well the day we wed

 I can see that picture in my head

I still believe the words we said

Forever will ring true

Love is certain, love is kind

Love is yours and love is mine

But it isn't something that we find

It's something that we do

It's holding tight, lettin' go

It's flying high and laying low

Let your strongest feelings show

And your weakness, too

It's a little and a lot to ask

An endless and a welcome task

Love isn't something that we have

It's something that we do

We help to make each other all that we can be

Though we can find our strength and inspiration independently

The way we work together is what sets our love apart
So closely that you can't tell where I end and where you start
~Clint Black/Donald Ewing

 

It was chilly that September morning as we gathered in our friends’ perfectly manicured backyard garden.  The appointed hour was 10:45 a.m. but of course we and the close circle of family and friends had been drifting in for an hour or more.  Nieces and nephews explored the bushes and trees and flower beds; friends huddled in conversational circles.  We had planned a simple ceremony; there had been no rehearsal.  Eventually the guests were shooed into chairs and Lori and I and Daddy convened before a large evergreen tree for the words, in the promises, the admonitions, the prayers, the readings, and finally the kiss.  Suddenly, it wasn’t only the cool morning air that caused the shivers.  And then the pictures, the greetings, the hugs and more kisses. 

And there we were:  husband and wife. 

Twenty-six years later as of today, I’m smiling.  Some years the smiling has been easier than others; some years fatter and others leaner; some years puzzling and others crystal clear.  But every evening we get to offer a cleansing, grateful kiss; every morning we wake to each other’s smile freckled by the prospect of a fresh day with new possibilities.

We don’t take such graces for granted.  And so we celebrate a lot and often this time of year.  On July 4 we celebrate the night we got engaged.  On August 31 we celebrate the anniversary of our first date which had occurred not quite a year prior to that engagement.  On September 11 we celebrate my birthday, and on the 12th my parents' anniversary of a marriage that extended 70 years - a pretty good example.  On September 20 we celebrate not only the anniversary of our wedding, but also the anniversary of our 2nd date during which both of us felt a subtle shift in the axis of the universe.  We hold them all as sacred days.  

We have been assaulted in recent months by enough evidence of mortality to know that these moments have a shelf life.  Days are intrinsically ephemeral.  There will come a day when one of us reaches across the table to take a hand no longer there.  Which is why in the meantime, these days are set apart...

...reverenced...

savored.   

As holy as they are euphoric.   

As filled with imagination as they are with memory. 

Interwoven so interdependently that, as the song observed, we can’t tell where I end and where you start.  It is a happy sanctum.

And for 26 years now, I have been the luckiest guy in the world.  

Smiling, then, at the memory of that evergreen tree, and shivering all over again, I can’t imagine what the next 26 years might hold.  We recall Daddy observing to us, just before we exchanged our vows and having heard those familiar words from 1 Corinthians 13, "We won't always be patient; we won't always be kind.  But when we are, God is working through us."

We are still, after all, figuring out how to help that happen, but let’s go, into how ever many of the next decades we can squeeze forward.  “I still believe the words we said forever will ring true.”