Thirty-Four Years of Wedding Bliss….Not!
Thirty-Four Years of Wedding Bliss….Not!
While I am not one who looks to the past, I do really think that it is important to remember so that you can use it as a gauge to see how far you’ve come! This week is mine and my husband’s Thirty-Fourth wedding Anniversary! Yippee! Yes I truly look at it as celebration! “We have come a long way baby!” I think to be married after Thirty four years is a great accomplishment!
My husband and I were just two crazy kids who thought we had the tiger by the tale! He was Twenty years old and I was only Seventeen when we married! We chuckle at how childish and immature that we were as our goals or must haves back in 1980 which was the year we got hitched was for him to have a big new shiny four-wheel-drive truck and mine was to have a beautiful black Trans Am with one of those huge golden eagles painted on the hood! Boy, those were huge dreams of ours! At the time we rented a home and owned furniture that others didn’t want or wouldn’t have. We begin our lives without a clue, and unfortunately we lived that way for many years of our marriage. As I said we were just crazy kids who knew nothing about the hard work that it was going to take to be together or should I say “stay together” for a lifetime as we had promised each other we would.
Sadly, I feel in this day and time that we now live in that the opinions of too many people are “If it doesn’t fit your lifestyle just right, then dump it” I recently read an article of an elderly couple that had literally been married for Eighty years! When asked how they stayed together for that long, their answer simply stated, “When something got broken, we just fixed it! We didn’t throw it away!” Yes I probably just lost some of my readers! If you are divorced or separated from your spouse, I in no way am trying to stand in judgment of you. There are many reasons why people do not stay together. For instance there may be physical abuse of which I would be your number one supporter, to get out with your life! What I have an issue with is just selfish choices! Believe me when I say to you, I can totally relate. It is not as though my marriage life has just been one big ol’ bowl of strawberries and whip cream! Quit looked good to me many times over the past Thirty-four years! As I look back in remembrance of my past years of marriage, NO….with a capital NO they were not always easy or even pleasant. There were times when I longed to have my own way and just live differently than my husband wanted to live. I had dreams that I wanted fulfilled and I am sure he did to, but somehow we couldn’t fulfill each other’s dreams! Here goes another honest truth…I was a manipulator and a control freak! I wanted things the way that I wanted them and if they never went my way then I would throw a tantrum like a little two-year old to try to get my husband to give me my way. My husband was just as stubborn and bull-headed as I was, and so as result he would not give in to me. Let me just say…It was on! After screaming, hollering and raging to no avail, I would finally give him the silent treatment for days in a last ditched attempt to manipulate him and cause him to do things my way. When in truth, he was probably so relieved and was saying “Thank God, that woman has finally shut up!”
Please note that I am not proud of my behavior and thank God and it is only because of God I have changed. My attempts at writing this to you is to perhaps spare you or even your marriage from being dumped! So here goes, more honesty and transparency! “Yes, I wanted to dump us, as I am sure at times my husband probably felt the same way! Why didn’t we dump us? My answer to you is that we made a commitment before God and to each other that we would not throw us away. Much like the little couple that I quoted above that was married for Eighty years; we vowed that we would fix what was broken. But what if it can’t be fixed, you may be asking? Thank God, and it is only by God’s grace in my marriage I have not found anything that can’t be fixed. However, what became revelation to us is that we ourselves were broken! It was never our marriage that was broken, it was us! Both my husband and I were two broken people trying to merge our broken lives into one whole. In order to fix us as a couple, we needed to be fixed individually. Too many broken people are getting married thinking that their spouses are going to fix what is broken in them! When this doesn’t happen, then they end their marriages. Another revelation is that we couldn’t fix ourselves. We had to have God to fix our broken lives. My husband could not satisfy the desires in my heart for wholeness, nor could I satisfy his. If my husband and I couldn’t figure it out then we took it to the Lord and would simply ask him to help us. He was always faithful to perfect that which concerned us. He still is!
If I had any advice that I feel would be the most helpful and in my opinion is the number one thing that makes our marriage strong it would to have forgiveness. Be quick to forgive your spouse! It is not always easy to forgive, but if you do it because it is the right thing to do, you will be amazed at how much more quickly things will work out! Never go to bed angry with one another! Always try to resolve any disagreements in short amounts of time. As I stated we are not perfect, so our marriage is not going to be like the perfect fairy tale marriages read in books where we ride off into the sunset when we are old and gray on beautiful Arabian type horses! No my husband and I had to ride a couple of stubborn blue mules, but because of that our marriage is strong. I look forward to the day when someone may ask us when we’ve been married Eighty plus years how we stayed together. My answer will be the story I just told you!
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