Yesterday Jane and I celebrated our 65th Wedding
anniversary. It was a good time to give thanks, reflect and look forward.
Jane and I had a long and wonderful conversation in the context of the
traditional Christian wedding vows plus a list or two of what it takes to have
a good marriage. A few of the thoughts that struck us are listed below.
We promised to live together in the holy estate of
matrimony. Our time together has been made holy by a gracious, generous,
forgiving God. We are aware that our spiritual insights, beliefs and values
have both remained firm and have significantly changed. We are much more open
and less dogmatic. We are more comfortable with mystery and not in need of
certainty about non-essentials. We are less provincial and feel a stronger
shared unity with all of God’s people and the whole creation.
We have experienced poverty and riches. We recalled
how in our early years of marriage Jane took our meager check, cashed it, and
carefully placed the appropriate amount in individual envelopes, even $1.00 for
postage. We have always tithed and more and as the years went by included more
and more “non-church” causes in our designations. We realized that after ten
years of marriage we were still making less than $300.00 a month (plus housing)
and now we live in a wonderful retirement community where our monthly fee is
well in excess of our annual salary in the first ten years.
Like others, we experienced together sickness
and health, both to an extreme extent. Our daughter Liz was once not expected
to live through Christmas Eve to the next day. We flew Jane home from Hong Kong
while she was in a virtual coma. We watched our son Dave’s face be destroyed by
cancer and held his hand as he breathed his last. And at age 88 both of us
still travel the country without cane, wheel chair or oxygen tanks,
We have learned to love and cherish each other
with a love that grows deeper with each passing year even as the sexual
expression of that love which we so much anticipated and enjoyed for so many years is
now sometimes more a memory than a current reality.
Our personal intercommunication has been
strengthened by our ever deeper commitment and practice of active listening,
non-blameful confrontation. win-win problem solving and honest sharing of
values and beliefs.
Family members including spouses and grandchildren
are sources of joy, pride, new insights, challenges and satisfactions.
Colleagues and work experiences enriched us.
Sixty-five years ago both of us anticipated spending our professional careers
in the elementary classrooms of Lutheran parochial schools. That would, of
course, also have been a very satisfying calling, but we have been blessed by
all kinds of other opportunities for service from California to New York to
tens of cities and countries around the world, ranging from Hong Kong to
Helsinki to Pakistan and places in between.
The marriage vows conclude with “as long as you
both shall live.” How long that will be is, of course, unknown to us. Yet this
we do know. It’s has been and is great. We are blessed beyond what we ever
imagined possible on that Saturday afternoon in Zion Lutheran Church,
Ft. Wayne, Indiana. 65 years ago.
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