Today is our 24th wedding anniversary.

2/10/90 I was 19. He was 23. What were we thinking?

Twenty. Four.Years.

It’s a long time. A lifetime for some of you reading this, in fact.

And in that time I’ve learned A LOT. Here’s a partial list, and yes it’s bugging me that there are only 6 but when I tried to come up with 10 it started sounding dumb.

1. Your mate cannot and should not complete you. Ever. That’s a great movie line but in real life, it’s co-dependence.
2. Romance is over-rated and short lived but a man who will hold your hair while you throw up from morning sickness and go to the store to buy you tampons is forever (clearly not on the same day).
3. Don’t have unrealistic expectations of your spouse. YOU CAN’T CHANGE THEM. Only God can do that. So pray for them. Everyday.
4. Don’t worry that over the years you’ll change. You WILL. But if you’ve chosen the right person you will grow and change TOGETHER.
5. Don’t ever loose your sense of humor. When it’s 2am and the twins are screaming their heads off and you feel like you’re loosing your mind, you need someone who will do the laugh of insanity with you. If you don’t know the laugh of insanity, have children. You will.
6. You will cycle through months or maybe even years of being madly, passionately in love. And then there will be months or maybe even years that are just OK. And there may even be sometimes when it’s feeling not worth it. But if you hang in there, and if you get a counselor if you need to, and if nobody is abusing anybody, it WILL cycle back and every time it does, the passionate madly in love part will get better and better and better. 

So that’s all I have on that. Because even after two dozen years of loving each other well, there’s so much we don’t understand. Marriage, like so many things that God gives us, is a mystery. I don’t know why my marriage has worked and why so many others, where people were equally intentioned, focused and loving have not. So every anniversary I will stop and be grateful. And thank God. Because I’m pretty messed up and so is my husband. And it is only because of God working and moving in each of us that this thing works. And at the end of the day, that’s really all I know for sure.

Happy running. And marriage.

Jen