My wife and I are celebrating our 40th anniversary this week, and I want to go back and change our wedding vows. Not renew our vows. Rather, I want to go back in time and, instead of using the standard-issue vows the Catholic priest provided to us, I want to write my own. Instead of this…
I take you to be my lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part.
I want to go back in time and say these vows…
I take you to be my lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold – but only after we both brush our teeth – from this day forward…
For better…
For the times in the coming years that we get new jobs, pay raises, bonuses, and perks. For those trips to Disney World that we’ll take with the young boys we will have. For all their games, all the family gatherings, and all the wonderful food and restaurants we will enjoy. For vacations to the beach and to the mountains. For the amusement park trips, and for your patience with me when I eventually discover my love of Civil War history, and the many trips we will take to Gettysburg.
For the immense amounts of time we will spend watching our kids on fields and courts, on beaches and trails, doing new things, getting better at old things. For the chance that we’ll have to enjoy their happiness with them. For the many times our young kids will grab our hands to hold as we go about our routine. And for those surprising and rare times when, as teenagers, they choose to hang out with us instead of their friends. I won’t take any of that for granted. For being able to share our own kids and good fortune with your parents and mine, and to live close enough to them to see them on a regular basis. For the many friends we have and will have in our lives, people who will share so much laughter and far too many good “memories” to predict right now.
For the time I will start my business with your support and we will watch it grow.
For watching our kids get to know and love their grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins. For their good health, curiosity about the world, and their love of learning and doing. For the houses we will live in and the homes we will create. For the daughters-in-law we will meet, and that grandson who will enable us to once again see the world with wonder through the eyes of a child.
For our sense of humor, our faith in God, and our daily fortitude and optimism that we won’t wear on our sleeves, but we will both know it’s there. We will know that if it resides in one of us at any given time, it will live in both of us as we draw strength from each other when we need it.
For worse…
For the fights and the stress and the setbacks we’ll experience and overcome. The times when the hours are too long and the days are too short. For the times when the world wants more from us than we have to give. For when the plumbing goes and we have nothing in the bank. Or, when that little blue car I will hate from the day we get it to the day it dies on a four-lane highway, and I’m in one of the middle lanes. For the time we’ll spend in emergency rooms with our kids after too many fluke sports injuries. For when, as parents, we will be calm on the outside, but nervous on the inside.
For the day I will lose my dad, and the nights I will lose my mother and sister. And then the night we will lose your father. For the times we lose others, some we have yet to meet but who will become friends, and still, they will leave us too soon.
For richer, for poorer…
For the times we will receive more than we asked for, and for the times we came up short. For the confidence that we will manage through it and come out of it all okay, I think. Mainly because we’ll never make being rich the only measure of a good life.
In sickness and in health…
For that day I will drop one of our kids off at school and go to a doctor's appointment and hear something I never anticipated and never wanted to hear. For our work together to learn what that will mean and how it will change things in ways we cannot foresee. And still, we will overcome that challenge, bruised but not broken.
To love and to cherish…
You know this will be the toughest for me in the traditional sense. I’ve never been big on public displays of affection, and I doubt over the next 40-plus years I’ll get much better at them. But I dare you to try to shake me free. I just don’t see it happening. I will be there on those big days, the boring ones, and the tough ones. You’ll never be alone, no matter what. That counts for something, doesn’t it?
I’ll be there to make you laugh and bring you up when no one else can, and to calm you as no one else will, just as you do for me.
Til death do us part…
Let’s not dwell on this one. Forty years and more will fly by fast enough. Let’s take it this way – one day at a time for the next 40 or more years, and let God decide the rest.
Meanwhile, I promise that I will try not to drive you nuts with my aggravating little habits, and I trust you will try on your end as well. But as I think of this, I know it will take more time. So, on this, our wedding day in 1985, I'm going to make one request of the Big Man upstairs. I'm going to need a lot more than 40 years to figure this thing out. This marriage thing. Until then, the adventure continues.
