Anniversary

August 3, 2020

Greetings from the rooms we share,

In most of life’s endeavors, thirty-five years would bring you a certain level of mastery.  I submit that marriage is not one of those.  Marriage is not plumbing or carpentry or the care of a bonsai.  There are myriad reasons we do not master this union, most of which exist in the people joined in it.  That is the joy and ache of the thing, and therein is the hope in it.

Thirty-five years ago, on this very date, I walked down the aisle of a church a different person than I had been when I entered.  I was married to Suzanne, and in those first steps we became witnesses to each other’s lives, necessary, as it turns out, as both of us became new people again and again.

In the years that have filled between that day and this, we have evolved and grown, so much that strangers would not always recognize us from one place and the next.  We were newlyweds, with that dewy aura, and then we turned our eyes to building a life, and we each became a little different, partners in a new way. 

And then Katherine was born, and we changed again.  And for a moment I couldn’t imagine us ever changing from that exciting life, and then we had triplet sons, Harrison, Carson and Sawyer.  And life was different again, and so were we.  Time passed, with all the rigors of raising up children to become young adults who can be launched into the world, and those experiences made new people out of Suzanne and me. 

I mean no disrespect to my marriage in saying that I have not yet figured it out, in fact the opposite.  The fact that it still requires learning and devotion to its success is what has contributed to our longevity and the richness of our lives.  Neither of us can take our role as witnesses for granted, because life is dynamic, and we are changing, and the charge is demanding.

I am not writing any of this as sage advice, I am still an acolyte, but I am a willing learner.  My level of maturity over these last decades has not kept pace with the information on my driver’s license, but I am evolved enough to be self-aware.  It is not easy being married to me, I’m confident of this.  I could illustrate my long list of spousal deficiencies, my reckoning, not my wife’s, but by the time you read this they will have changed and been added to, so the allusion will suffice.

The French writer Andre Maurois said, “A successful marriage is an edifice that must be rebuilt every day.”  I have considered this and found it true in that the effort that must be invested, but to me the edifice is not always being rebuilt as much as added to.

We have been building a house together.  In each new part of our lives we add rooms for us and for the people who have joined us. Here is the first room where we learned who the other was and how we would love.  Here is where our new friends came, now knowing us as a couple.  Here is where we made plans for other rooms.  Here is the room where our first child came to us.  Another where we lost children. Another where the boys joined us.

We build these rooms and add on to the life that is coming to us, and in each room we are a little different.  Not strangers, just new.  But the beauty in this is that we still have all of those other rooms, and we can go back and visit and see who we were and how life was.  And in all of that, entering each room we fall in love over and over again, with those versions of us, and who we are today.  We are witnesses to each other to remind us both of the rooms to look in.

Suzanne and I also build rooms for ourselves.  On the day we were married my friend Tom read a letter to us and the other witnesses there.  I keep it in my desk and look at it from time to time, and it is here with me now.  Among other things he urged us to talk and listen, and to give each other room to think our own thoughts.  Sometimes my room is a long stretch of road, and sometimes hers is a beautiful yard.  Sometimes it is this room where I write, and hers is right there where she reads and creates and sees the future.

It is not lost on me that this house of many rooms is not unlike the place where our Creator waits.  As we have been building each room in our lives, we have felt that presence.  God is in each room, patiently showing us, explaining in small ways and large, the complexities of our life. We are reintroduced to each other by God, these new witnesses in new rooms, giving us the chance to nurture the promises we made thirty-five years ago.

Now we are in a new doorway, a room that holds other futures, other people, other experiences.  There are hallways that extend out beyond what we can see, or may ever see.  Our children, and grandchildren are in these places.  You, whatever version of you that comes, will be welcome there too.  Another lesson from Tom, in that warm church thirty-five years ago,

was to make room for those of you in our lives who love us and bring us gifts we would otherwise miss.

Our life as witnesses to each other continues.  We love each other and lead each other into the new rooms,  holding hands, looking into the corners, making choices together about how the space will be, as we become new people again, and still bride and groom, newlyweds, new parents, and all the rest, and all of time each other’s.

Hope this finds you opening doors to see,

David