140 years of marriage

Today is our 35th wedding anniversary and we have just spent a week with good friends, Richard and Vanessa, who will celebrate their 35th wedding anniversary on Wednesday. As we sat at dinner the other evening, we decided that our 70 combined years of marriage were pretty unique nowadays. A little while later, Richard spoke of 140 years of marriage, and after a bit of discusiion, we decided that it was a more accurate way of describing our experiences of marrigae - each of us has experienced the past 35 years in a different way. So together, we represented 140 years of being married.

We talked about whether any of us had ever thought about getting out of marriage - and for all of us, it has been a lifetime commitment, even though all of us have gone through some tough times. Marriage has involved work - and all 4 of us had the Marriage Encounter experience to give us tools to deal with it. Another way of strengthening our marriages was meeting regularly with other married couples and talking honestly about what makes our marriages tick and what are the hardest things about being married. And being part of a church community has also been a way of building our marriages.

I feel so blessed to have so many years of marriage to look back on, and look forward to many more years.

Happy anniversary, Pete, Richard and Vanessa. 140 good years between us all.