It’s all a crapshoot you know.  You find someone with whom you have things in common, go on some dates, make some plans and get married.  You promise each other in front of God and witnesses that you will love and honor each other til death do you part and off you go.  They don’t call it a honeymoon period for nothing.  It’s all about playing house and living in your own place being grown-ups.  And then life happens.

I have friends and family who did the same thing as my husband and I and for various reasons, theirs didn’t work.  It’s not that they didn’t take it seriously, but at some point they stopped being friends, stopped caring for each other, stopped liking the same things.        Sometimes it was something devastating in their lives where nothing was ever the same and there was not enough left to hold it all together.  But there are others who share similar stories and yet their marriage survives.  It all seems such a mystery.

Oftentimes people will ask couples who have been married for a long period of time what their secret is.  So after 38 years today, I can tell you it shouldn’t be a secret and here it is; sweat, tears, prayers and hard work.  This doesn’t mean that our lives have been miserable, but life is life.  I think we do young couples a disservice when we wish them a lifetime of happiness.  It’s a great sentiment, but that’s not real life.  There are going to be arguments.  At the very least, you’ll get snippy with each other because quite frankly, when you spend a lot of time with one person, you can get irritated from time to time.

Arguments for us weren’t really arguments.  I would get really angry, cry, and try to get him to argue back – and he wouldn’t.  It frustrated me no end because it always looked like I was the irrational one – and maybe I was.  After years of this, I learned not to hold things in for a long period of time until I exploded and he learned to pay attention to when I got really quiet.  We don’t argue very much at all any more, in fact, I can’t remember the last argument we had.  Life is too short and I think we’ve just known each other long enough now that we can be more proactive about things or we’ve figured out that some things are just not that important to argue about.

There have been deaths in the family, premature children, many moves, financial issues, and times when our jobs got in the way of each other.  We have sweat together on asphalt fields at band camp, disagreeing about how to teach something, cried together out of happiness and sadness, prayed when we just couldn’t handle things anymore and times when we just knew we had to buckle down together to make it work.  When you take two imperfect people in an imperfect world, things aren’t necessarily going to just click.  But just like anything else that takes hard work, marriage can be so worth it.

We’ve seen each other at our best and worst, in sickness and in health, to celebrate with and to console.  When you share those kinds of life experiences, it builds a bond that becomes difficult to break.  And as you grow older and if each person has encouraged and allowed the other to grow, you end up with two human beings who have become the one talked about in those early wedding vows.  He’s the one I wake up with and go to sleep with, the first one I want to tell a funny story to or share something that’s bothering me.  As cliche as it sounds, he is truly my best friend.

As we celebrate 38 years today, it is truly a celebration.  We are going to spend the day together, just doing fun, everyday things because that’s who we are.  Brunch, a movie, maybe something else fun and dinner together, finishing with drinks on the balcony.  Nothing fancy, but it doesn’t get any better than that.  All of the hard work has paid off and through it all we’ve learned so much and become so grateful.  While I doubt we’ll celebrate 38 more, (although we would only be 96 : ), I know that however long we’re together it will only get better.  Happy Anniversary Doug!