This weekend, Sandy and I retreated to Atlanta and Stone Mountain for our 20th anniversary. We ate at Everybody's Pizza, the first place we ever went out to eat together. We replayed our first date at the Stone Mountain Laser Show. What a wonderful trip down memory lane.It is amazing to reflect on what marriage means to me. What a beautiful design God laid down for our lives. God so ordered our lives that we would become one flesh and create a family. Sandy and I participate in the picture God pressed into the fabric of creation, and there is great blessing in being part of something much bigger than we are. It's not that marriage is an institution, though our culture is built around that assumption. No, it's that marriage is a form of completion, a way of being made whole. It's not the only way, and there are certainly those called to the single life. But for us, it is an integral part of our spirituality. Marriage is companionship, it is togetherness that brings our loneliness into a sense of wholeness. It is both solitude and communion. It is oneness for our brokenness.
My wife does not complete me in the sense that Christ completes me. But together, Sandy and I journey in love. We are not alone on this lone quest for God. There is great wisdom in the vows of marriage. There has been better and worse, there has been richer and poorer, there has been sickness and health. But we honor each other with all of who we are.
I'm thankful for 20 years of finding great joy in the stuff of life. It's a joy that comes not because every moment is "happy," but because we are finding it together. Marriage ushers our spirits into the great joy and praise of creation. We were made for one another.
