Saturday I am going to a wedding! I have been anticipating this celebration for months – ever since my friends, the parents of the bride, announced the good news. This wedding is special because the bride is my son’s close friend, his sister of sorts. He never had a sister. She had no siblings. They grew up just doors away from each other and shared lots of good times together.

Allison drove Aaron to school for a year before he got his license, because she is a year older. They participated in several church youth events together. She cheered him on in his sports events. He attended her choir productions. When they graduated from college they celebrated in down town Chicago at the restaurant of her choice because she graduated with the higher GPA. When it came time for her to move into her first home, Aaron helped her dad place all the furniture.

A few years after college Aaron married another neighbor – his elementary school sweetheart! Allison earned her master’s degree and went to work in Chicago. Their friendship continued, but with new challenges, the time they could spend together didn’t come as often.

Saturday Aaron will be an usher in her wedding and walk her mother down the aisle.

Their friendship, sealed while still young, has remained true.

I pray for both young couples - that years from now their love and passion for each other will have grown deep and steady, that no matter what storms threaten to pound and provoke them, that they would remain true to each other and the God at whose altar they have said, “I do.”

I pray this prayer because I know its power. Others have prayed for me and my marriage – my marriage of going-on 37 years!! I look back on the storms – how they pounded and provoked us. I think of the hard times, those times I wondered if staying together was really worth it all.

YES! – I want everyone to know. Working it out, staying together--it is worth it all.

I think of what we might have missed had we gone our separate ways after the proverbial 7 year itch. We would have never experienced the birth of our two sons.

What if we had separated after the first decade of marriage? Forgiveness and unconditional love would have never entered our relationship!

And had we chosen different paths after twenty years of marriage, we would not have built our house together, the one where we studied the Bible with other couples, the one where 36 football players lined up for spaghetti dinners, the one where friends came to pray with me when I learned my daddy had entered his last days of life on this earth, the one where church elders and architects met countless times into the wee hours of the morning designing the building where hundreds of people would eventually worship God and study His Word.

It saddens me to think that we might have hung up all our hard work, even after sharing so many blessings, and HARD ships. But we hung in there through cross-country corporate moves that separated us physically and emotionally. We remained true to our vows as we bent over our son’s very sick body and prayed him through the valley of the shadow of death. We traveled together and with our sons experiencing the beauty of God’s creation. We modeled marriage for our sons and for that can smile at the future.

I could continue with a long list of the reasons I celebrate our marriage.

What about you? Can you make a list of the good that has come from your commitment?

And if you have reached a crooked place in your marriage, let me challenge you to consider – what will your life look like 50 years from now? Recently I received an encouraging CD that I would like you to consider. It is titled

Fifty Years from Now.

Here are the lyrics to one song. Click the above title to purchase the entire CD. You will be glad you did!


FIFTY YEARS FROM NOW
Words & Music by John Mandeville, Steve Siler, & Bill Ebert

What do you do when the fire's gone and passion fades away Just being together used to be enough

But now what?

How do we feel what we used to feel

Can we learn how to care when it seems such a long way back

from here to there

Right now it feels like it would be easier

To give up and give in, but
Fifty years from now What will we remember?

Fifty years from now What will we have to treasure?

If we walk away from this

What will we have missed?

Fifty years, Fifty years from now


Dance recitals and T- ball games

The simple joys of the day

Will we let the best of life just pass us by

Graduations and wedding days

Grandkids up on our knees

Will we make a huge mistake or memories?

Do we just throw away what we started

Missing us, missing out


CHORUS


God gave us this love

We need to see it through

The moment's ours

The choice is up to me and you