December 28, 2024
Happy Anniversary
If you want to make sure your anniversary doesn't get lost in the hustle and bustle of life, don't get married between Christmas and New Year's. When we got married 39 years ago, that thought didn't come to mind when planning the wedding.
Over the years we've usually done pretty well remembering our anniversary. However, this year between having a daughter and her family visiting, work, church, and a very unwelcome bout of stomach flu, our anniversary sort of got lost in the shuffle. About halfway through the day my husband remembered to tell me happy anniversary, and I told him happy anniversary and we went on with what we were doing
Now, most people would think it's terrible that we didn't do something special, like go to a fancy restaurant for an anniversary dinner. It is important to remember things by celebrating them. After all, God told His people in the Bible they should celebrate certain days to remind them of what God had done for them. However, they were supposed to remember and celebrate it in their hearts every day. In the same way, marriage shouldn't be celebrated one day a year, on the anniversary. It should be celebrated every day.
Many people have followed our "dates" on social media. They love that we go do a fun activity every week or two. For most of our marriage that didn't happen. Most of our time was spent trying to make it through life. But that is what marriage is; working together to grow closer to the Lord and to build a life together. Most of the time we were working to raise children, pay bills, and balance all the responsibilities we had. But we were still celebrating our marriage by staying together, even in the hard times. We celebrated by loving each other, even when we were annoyed at each other. We celebrated by encouraging each other to seek the Lord.
Today, on our 39th anniversary, we took my daughter and her family out on a boat on the Homosassa River instead of going out to a fancy restaurant with just the two of us. But we did celebrate our anniversary. We celebrated by together showing our grandsons manatees swimming in the river and teaching them how they needed to be protected. We celebrated by together showing our grandsons dolphins, cormorants, pelicans, turtles, and a bald eagle. We celebrated by together teaching our grandsons to respect and value the amazing wildlife that God created. We celebrated by together watching the younger grandsons get rocked to sleep by the motion of the boat. We celebrated by together watching our oldest grandson smile with joy as we raced along the river "going 100 miles an hour" (it was actually less than 20 miles an hour!).
Sometime in the next few weeks we'll go to my favorite Italian restaurant and get a fancy, over-priced meal for our anniversary. But today we celebrated our marriage.
