Twenty

Twenty years ago this month, I was frantically diving in to my last semester of coursework, trying to wrap up work on my degree so that I could move on to the real business at hand.

I was getting married.

I had known my husband since my first weekend at school, had been pretty sure I would marry him for nearly as long. It took four years for the actual even that bound us together, but finally, finally, it was at hand.

A ton of effort went into that day. Family and friends worked together to give us a beautiful day of celebration that started our marriage off with a sweet, celebratory bang. Flowers. Food. An amazing dress. A string quartet. Cake.

Twenty years in and I can tell you the color of the napkins at our reception (“snow”), but I look around and wonder what happened to the past two decades. And then I remember: we lived it. All of it. Birth, death, adoption, relocation, missions, faith, parenting, pets, jobs, loss, family. Twenty years of the stuff that happens minute by minute, without any real note except relief at the end of some days, and joy at the end of some others.

 

Some of those days have been, like our wedding, everything I could have hoped for. There have been countless kisses over morning coffee, long stretches of afternoons spent sitting on grass and watching a soccer ball being kicked across our yard, dancing in our kitchen, quiet evenings of just us two, snuggled on the couch. There has been laughter, and singing, and the beautiful, lusty howl of newborn babies trying their voices for the first time.

Some of those days have been harder than I imagined when I signed the marriage license. There have been empty bank accounts in the middle of the month, children who have chosen badly, a country left behind, and terrifying moments in ERs where all I’ve wanted to do is wish it all away. There have been funerals, broken hearts and times when the best thing to say was nothing at all.

We’ve lived all of it; twenty years of a life less ordinary, twenty years of the real thing. The good, the bad. Together.

Recently, I was asked our plans for celebrating the upcoming anniversary. Twenty years! A milestone. A Big One.

I sheepishly replied that our plan was … no plan. Come June, we’ll still have a nursing baby, so a long getaway that takes us far from home is out of the question. Plus, our finances just don’t have wiggle room to book an overnight even at a local spot. To be honest, I don’t see us affording a fancy dinner out, either. We’re in a season of meeting needs and covering basics, not being able to indulge in the luxuries of life. It’ll have to wait, I told the friend with a sigh. No big celebration. Not this year.

I admit it, I was put out after the conversation. My eyes wandered to the things I wanted, the things I was missing out on, the things I felt like I deserved. Once upon a time, I had grand visions of our twenty year anniversary. And now? Now we’ll probably put the littles to bed early, send the big kids upstairs with a laptop to watch The Lord of the Rings, and share a dish of blackberry cobbler with a scoop of vanilla ice cream before we watch a forgettable movie on Prime. Talk about luxury!

Somewhere in the middle of my navel gazing, I realized the truth. The real luxury? It’s not the dinner out. It’s not the trip to a secluded, romantic locale. It’s not even time alone with my husband. It’s the life I’ve already lived — the life I will continue to live — with this incredible, godly man who has stood beside me through feast and famine.

The real celebration won’t be one day, or one night. It’ll be every day, every night. Checking on outdoor faucets in the freezing cold, bringing one another soup in bed to help ease the aches of the flu, dancing with our children as we celebrate their own weddings. This is the reality of twenty years of marriage, and the fact that I have a husband I still want to spend forever with after all this time? The fact that I get to do this life, with this man? I’ll take that over dinner out any day.