A Happy (but embarrassing) 17th Wedding Anniversary

We’ve enjoyed a restful Sabbath—that also happened to be our 17th wedding anniversary. Piles of chaos were left out around the house after our two weeks of hosting guests and we dove into numerous games (all of us) and videos (the kids and Fred) and time to just talk and be.

It was refreshing—but also a tad embarrassing when we pulled out our box o’ love letters and our wedding scrapbook. I didn’t remember being so sappy! But I was. Verbal and sappy—not a great combination.

Still, it was very fun to discover that Fred switched from a secret admirer to a not-so-secret-admirer on December 17th (1993)—ten years to the day from Sophia’s birth date. I still remember coming out to my Honda Civic on the way to my first law school exams and seeing the little love note in a ziplock bag tucked under my windshield wipers. Yeah. We had it bad.

The photos of my nieces and nephews were particularly striking—wee tiny babies (one of them introduced to me via FAX because, yes, this was 1993 and that was the fastest way to see them), now college and conservatory and art institute students. It’s just crazy how fast time flies.

One thing I’m really glad I did way back 17 years ago? I printed all of the emails Fred and I exchanged during our courtship. So many of them are so fun to read—especially his little graphics made in old c> prompt DOS programming. (He thinks Mark Smith gave him some sort of code to make the Valentines Day hearts.) How happy I was when I would log on to the computers in the law school basement and see that I had an email from FSBARTHEL. Still being TLKLENA at that point, we had many a sweet exchange and I’m glad they weren’t just deleted. Can young people save texts and emails and FaceBook exchanges these days? I hope so. Just like my mother and father in law’s handwritten letters during their courtship, those early, tentative exchanges are treasures.

As is my husband. A treasure. Imperfect, of course, but a true gift of God’s grace to me.

 Yes, our love is less naive than it was way back then. As we have aged and weathered life’s storms together, we have seen depths of depravity and selfishness and sin in both of our hearts that we never would have imagined possible back when we were first starting out together. We have failed each other, ignored each other, and run away from each other. We have also forgiven each other, prayed for each other, and gotten help when needed.

It’s true—no one has ever hurt me as deeply as Fred. But no one has ever forgiven me as much either.

Once you get to know one another—truly know one another—the opportunities for faithful, self-sacrificing, heart-wrenching love abound. But real sacrifice means real sacrifice. Pain. Grief. Loneliness. Real loneliness—the kind that comes when the relationships closest to you let you down and you have a choice: draw close to the Lord and find yourself fully in Him? (And thus, be able to heal your interpersonal relationships because you both are drawing closer to the Lord.) Or give up. Run away. Pull back. Look for the greener grass on the other side of the relational let down.

How grateful I am for my faithful husband of 17 years. How grateful I am for God’s Spirit, His Word, and His Body, all helping us to stay together all of these years. How hopeful I am that the next 17 years (or however much time  God grants us to live) will be even richer and sweeter than the first.

Yes, our love letters (especially mine!) were embarrassing. But I’m glad we started out with some level of ecstatic lovey-dovey-ness. It’s fun to imagine our younger selves so happy, so smitten, so in love. Even still, I’ll take the older, seasoned, refined through the fires of suffering and sweetened by tens of thousands of happy memories, love any day.

Thanks, Fred, for 17 years. You do make me deliriously happy and I am—

Forever  yours,
Tara