Angie and I celebrated 40 years of marriage this past summer! We've been blessed to have a wonderful marriage, awesome children who have grown up into amazing adults, and now we have a couple of fabulous grandchildren.
There were definitely moments when Angie and I went through patches where one of us wasn’t sure we’d make it another year. Yet we worked through the pains, celebrated the joys, and quietly trained one another to make our marriage more successful.
Mostly that means that Angie has been training me for 40 years and I didn’t even realize for the first 25! great example is that I realized she has trained me by texting me when she’s on her way home and magically, I have dinner ready for her when she arrives. How’d she do that?
Here’s another good example: I make the bed in the morning and remember her smoothing out my rumples but still glad it was done. Seriously, I never made my bed as a child, teenager, young adult, or bachelor. If I did make the bed it was because I’d cleaned the room and thought a properly made bed just topped it off. Angie likes the bed made, every day, without fail, before we go about our day. Somehow, she trained me to automatically make the bed if I woke up after her. How’d she do that?
Following Christ can be like marriage – you train each other to live the way you like in marriage and God trains you to live with others the way God likes! That’s why Jesus was on this earth and that’s what he did with his disciples, he trained them to be good humans. Jesus set a good example, did what his father expected of him, and did his best to pass those lessons on to his friends.
A big part of the success in our marriage is because we've faithfully attended church starting early in our marriage. We were married in the church, we raised our children in the church, and now I'm serving a church of my own after answering God's call to serve late in life. We thank God for helping us to remain married and madly in love with one another during our 40 years together.
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