I was fortunate enough to attend the wedding of my lovely niece this weekend. Witnessing a blessed event like this always causes me to pause and think about weddings, receptions, dresses, cakes, centerpieces, honeymoons, children, and life in general!
Marriage is so much more than flowers and themes. It truly is a partnership with God to cultivate a little bit of heaven on earth. Has my home always felt like a heaven every day since my marriage 23 years ago? I wish I could say so. I often think how nice it would be to go back to my wedding day and start over knowing everything I know now. Oh, I would still make mistakes, but my perspective has changed so much that I feel that I could “do it better” if only I could begin again.
But really, these covenants are not static. One choice on one day does not a marriage make. Well, legally I guess it does. But marriage is a series of choices made every day to love and honor, support and sustain, cherish and nurture. This covenant is renewed in spirit every time we choose to exercise patience when it would be understandable not to or when we sacrifice our wants to fulfill our spouse’s needs or in a hundred other ways when we make deliberate choices to uphold the commitment we made on that one special day.
The choice is ours, in each moment, to continue to say “I Will/Yes/I Do.”