The 50th Wedding Anniversary
When you stroll through a cemetery, you see inscribed on granite stones the life span of thousands of individuals whose entire existence is summed up by a dash chiseled into granite between the day they were born and the day they died. With some imagination you know that within that dash live untold troubles, misery, inexpressible joy, loss, escalating hopes and dreams, terrifying fears, debilitating discouragements, and life-changing failures and successes. An entire life with every conceivable event common to man is hidden there.
When a couple says they have been married for 50 years, not one life - but two - are in that little dash of time. Two lives that were initially totally separated and independent of one another became intimately intertwined in or near adolescence and passed through the prime period of their existence on earth in union. In that space, the average couple starts their journey hand in hand most likely in their 20s and one day steps over a distant threshold well on their way towards 80. The paramount days of their health, their strength, and their mental acumen will have been spent in that half-century slot. Apart from high school, all the major events of a fully involved life – except death - are covered and experienced. They will see the parents who ushered them to the altar finish their lives. If they bear children, they will be conceived, born, raised, educated, and married, and the whole experience will be accompanied by ever-mounting financial pressures that will at times seem overwhelming. As the entire family expands, a couple will watch with both joy and sorrow what unfolds as those they brought into this world begin the same journey from birth to earth. Together they will experience happiness and heartache as they witness their offspring embrace the good as well as the unpleasantness - and sometimes the anguish, grief, and pangs - that this life affords them too. In those 50 years, they may have to face the ultimate unimaginable agony and stand arm in arm over the grave of a son or daughter, or even a grandchild, as they peer down in dull emptiness and sober silence and reflect on what it all means.
Together they will start from zero and build a life-long financial base that good fortune or talent will afford for them or what unexpected and intervening circumstances and Providence leave behind. When on that happy day of youth they say, “I do,” they have absolutely no comprehension in any compartment of their imagination what their lot and portion will be or what the future portends if they should be fortunate enough to dwell together for half of a century. However, wedding liturgies hint at what lurks beneath the deep, dark waters the young couple will wade when they say “for better or for worse”, “for richer or poorer,” “in sickness and health.” At least one half of each of those dualities will be visited upon every couple as a unit, along with the normal vicissitudes and troubles of this life. The obstacles that impede reaching 50 are formidable. Sometimes - no, most of the time - any one of those things plus a million others - split couples like glued wood that is pried apart and leave millions of hopeful husbands and wives short of the golden goal. Should any finally reach that distant line, those three words – 50th wedding anniversary - are a dash scarred deeply on the monument of two lives that have encased and embraced things they could never have imagined. Only by the grace of God and through love that covers and ignores a multitude of sins and offenses is it possible for a fallen son and daughter of Adam to reach such a day with their matrimony still in tact. We start our wedding day with these words, “What God has joined together, let no man put asunder.” After 18,250 days of being linked together in this life, both of you are well on your way to that next phrase that was probably cited at your ceremony about that big and inexorable event that will finally bring your marriage to its natural and inevitable termination. Until then, may the Lord continue to grant us the blessings of a life together in which “love covers all things” “until death do us part.”
When a couple says they have been married for 50 years, not one life - but two - are in that little dash of time. Two lives that were initially totally separated and independent of one another became intimately intertwined in or near adolescence and passed through the prime period of their existence on earth in union. In that space, the average couple starts their journey hand in hand most likely in their 20s and one day steps over a distant threshold well on their way towards 80. The paramount days of their health, their strength, and their mental acumen will have been spent in that half-century slot. Apart from high school, all the major events of a fully involved life – except death - are covered and experienced. They will see the parents who ushered them to the altar finish their lives. If they bear children, they will be conceived, born, raised, educated, and married, and the whole experience will be accompanied by ever-mounting financial pressures that will at times seem overwhelming. As the entire family expands, a couple will watch with both joy and sorrow what unfolds as those they brought into this world begin the same journey from birth to earth. Together they will experience happiness and heartache as they witness their offspring embrace the good as well as the unpleasantness - and sometimes the anguish, grief, and pangs - that this life affords them too. In those 50 years, they may have to face the ultimate unimaginable agony and stand arm in arm over the grave of a son or daughter, or even a grandchild, as they peer down in dull emptiness and sober silence and reflect on what it all means.
Together they will start from zero and build a life-long financial base that good fortune or talent will afford for them or what unexpected and intervening circumstances and Providence leave behind. When on that happy day of youth they say, “I do,” they have absolutely no comprehension in any compartment of their imagination what their lot and portion will be or what the future portends if they should be fortunate enough to dwell together for half of a century. However, wedding liturgies hint at what lurks beneath the deep, dark waters the young couple will wade when they say “for better or for worse”, “for richer or poorer,” “in sickness and health.” At least one half of each of those dualities will be visited upon every couple as a unit, along with the normal vicissitudes and troubles of this life. The obstacles that impede reaching 50 are formidable. Sometimes - no, most of the time - any one of those things plus a million others - split couples like glued wood that is pried apart and leave millions of hopeful husbands and wives short of the golden goal. Should any finally reach that distant line, those three words – 50th wedding anniversary - are a dash scarred deeply on the monument of two lives that have encased and embraced things they could never have imagined. Only by the grace of God and through love that covers and ignores a multitude of sins and offenses is it possible for a fallen son and daughter of Adam to reach such a day with their matrimony still in tact. We start our wedding day with these words, “What God has joined together, let no man put asunder.” After 18,250 days of being linked together in this life, both of you are well on your way to that next phrase that was probably cited at your ceremony about that big and inexorable event that will finally bring your marriage to its natural and inevitable termination. Until then, may the Lord continue to grant us the blessings of a life together in which “love covers all things” “until death do us part.”