When Your Choices Catch Up with You

One year ago we celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary by renewing our vows in a sunset ceremony on a Hawaiian beach near our home. There’s something extraordinary about celebrating love that has lasted the test of time and getting to celebrate it exactly the way you want. There is something extraordinary about knowing you have more than love to make it work: you have a history of making good choices when the good feelings didn’t show up. There’s something extraordinary about the dress, the food, and the decorations taking their proper place as welcome ceremony guests so the Creator of ceremony and His word can take center stage.

That’s what our vow renewal was for us, a celebration of rearranged priorities and His faithfulness that says He is in it to win it through thick and thin. On this 16^th anniversary – one full year after that breezy beach ceremony and 16 years after our original I Do’s – we realize the rearranged priorities is a daily {hourly?} commitment. Sometimes I waltz happy at keeping Him front and center of our marriage because it’s easy. Sometimes I move slow like an obstinate cow in the pasture because I’m reluctant. And sometimes I just fold my arms, stomp my feet, and say, “Hmph! Me first!” because I’m selfish.

But God’s still in it to win it, and we cling to that by keeping up the daily ceremonies of praising Him and praying to Him. We tell Him “Thank You.” and “I’m sorry.” He answers with unconditional love and forgiveness, both always in greater amounts than any  gift box or wedding banquet table could hold.

Today, I thank God for my man who is indeed outstanding among ten thousand. I don’t really deserve him, but then again neither does anyone else! So I’ll keep him!

“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breath and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of Being and ideal Grace…”

Excerpt of Sonnet No. 43, from the Portuguese

Elizabeth Barrett Browning