Just need a wedding, II

We're kind of used to the wedding routine. At some point, it seems that most of them have a progressive dance, in which they ask all married couples to come to the dance floor and then dismiss them by how recently they married, beginning with the bride and groom, who've always only been married for a few hours by then. Usually there is an older couple that everyone knows is going to be the last one on the floor - often grandparents of the bride or groom - and it's usually some couple in their seventies or older.

As we found a place on the dance floor, I looked around us and said to my wife: y'know, we could be it this time.

As we danced, there was one couple clearly older than us - also much better dancers, btw - that I really thought had been married longer than we have been. When they dismissed everyone married less than thirty years, sure enough, they were one of the three couples left, along with us and another couple.

Now, don't get me wrong, I don't really think of this as a competition. The longevity of our marriage is its own blessing. But I'm also not suggesting that I don't think long-standing marriages aren't worth celebrating. It doesn't happen just by inertia, and the sacrifices couples make for each other are real and worth recognizing; it's important, in fact, to talk about our struggles, lest younger couples not understand that very serious challenges can indeed be overcome. I had no idea I'd married someone who would be so unfaithful early in our marriage, any more than she knew she'd married someone who would fail her and our daughters so utterly (to be slightly less in the reader's face about things). Neither of us understood our own brokenness, let alone the other's. And we have overcome much to build the healthy, committed relationship through which we are blessed today.

We were pretty surprised when both other couples left the dance floor together, having been married less than 35 years. We are only eight months over that mark ourselves. Afterward, one of the groom's sisters, whom we know very well through music ministry from before she moved away from the area several years ago, spoke very earnestly to us as we were saying our goodbyes of the example that our relationship is for "us younger couples," and how clear it is that we love each other. It was really affirming for us that she shared this.

Sometimes I feel like I'm still failing at this. I don't always love my bride all the ways that I wish I did, and often the ways that I do are despite my feelings in the moment rather than because of them. But this I know: loving this woman is God's plan for my life, and I am blessed to do so, and doubly blessed that she loves me, too.