September 25th will mark 46 years that Jay and I have been married. Every year, we have posted pictures of our wedding, which was a very memorable day.
I will probably still post the story again sometime in the next week. We started married life with a carefully planned wedding that deteriorated into something more like slap stick comedy.
However, as the years have passed, we have noticed the wedding pictures do not give us the same “feel good” feelings as they once did.
The ones identified as us in the pictures are not us. Oh sure they were the people who we were in 1977, but they represent only a bare glimpse of who we are now.
Those two youngsters thought they knew what love was, but they didn’t. In fact, if we could have told our younger selves all the ways they would learn about True Love in the next 46 years, they may not have even wanted to get married.
But God is merciful in how He spoon feeds us life, letting us digest it a little at a time.
Marriage has also been repeated seasons of planting, watering, fertilizing, weeding and watching beautiful things grow.
We are happy to report we are perennials, not annuals. We go down, but we bloom again. God is a Masterful Gardener.
The other reason we don’t look at the wedding pictures as longingly as we once did is because we cannot have a do over with many of the people in the pictures …. at least not now. One day we hope to be together again at the ultimate wedding in Heaven.
But for now, my parents, Jay’s parents, Jay’s Grandmother, Jay’s best man, Jay’s groomsman and various wedding guests have moved off earth. We treasure their memories, but they are no longer physically here.
And finally, the place where we got married has also been repurposed. A big building stands where our lovely garden used to be. We cannot even sit under the tree and reminisce.
But oh what joy we have in what we have now. We have mature bodies that have stood even through many assaults over the years. Our faces have enough laugh lines to say there were a lot of funny things in life.
We still are in love with each other and most days like each other. (By way of full disclosure, we do have the unique ability to get on each other’s very last nerve and provoke feelings that result in very loud words that are not nice at all.😡)
We have had fulfilling careers that allowed us to help others. We made it to retirement and we have been able to do joint projects as the Jones team in various other ways.
We live in our dream house. We dreamed it together and have recreated it again and again, molding our nest more and more to fit who we are now.
We have claimed as our home the city and state where we found each other. We can drive two major roads here and find landmarks of most of our history.
God has further blessed us by bringing our daughter, son in law and grandson back to Kentucky. They have brought a new and exciting addition to our life as we watch them making their memories.
And that is another reason the wedding pictures have lost a little of their luster. I look at them and find myself searching for our daughter. She is so much a part of our life that I can hardly process there was a time in our history when she was not there.
I find myself dreaming a new dream. I want to get married again to the Love of My Life as the people we now are.
I want to do it at one of the places we now find special. And I’d like our daughter and her family to be there this time.
Having a senior wedding would give us a chance to look back and a chance to look forward.
We can have some new wedding pictures and you all can be in them too!
Since it would be something new, it would be on a different date too … perhaps even a different season.
And less anyone say, “Isn’t that more like a 50th Anniversary celebration,” I would say, “We’ve never done anything in the traditional way. Why start now?”
Here is the link to one of my favorite songs that puts memories in the proper balance.
For I am about to do something new. See, I have already begun!
Isaiah 43:19
This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it!
Psalm 118:24
