Reflections on an Anniversary. A Note From Jan.

Today, May 31, our wedding anniversary. Would’ve been 52 years. Was 51 years, 5 months and 20 days. To the young it must seem so long. Not so.

“Sunrise, sunset, Swiftly fly the years…”

Weeks of reading, reflecting, praying and writing on love for the baccalaureate talk, coupled with my anniversary, keeps me on topic. Love.

Some random quotes on love and marriage. Some for reflection, others for a laugh or a roll of your eyes:

“By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you’ll be happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.” Socrates

“The first duty of love is to listen. “  Paul Tillich

“Some people ask the secret to our long marriage.  We take time to go to a restaurant two times a week. A little candlelight, dinner, soft music and dancing.  She goes on Tuesdays, I go Fridays.”  Henny Youngman

“I married the first man I ever kissed.  When I tell this to my children, they just about throw up.”  Barbara Bush

“The hunger for love  is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.” Mother Teresa

“The course of true love never did run smooth.” William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

“You can’t blame gravity for falling in love.”  Albert Einstein

“Love is supreme and unconditional; like is nice but limited…”  Duke Ellington

“Men who have a pierced ear are better prepared for marriage…they’ve experienced pain and bought jewelry.”  Rita Rudner

Some words written by Frederick Buechner  helped me reflect on the vows Jud and I made on May 31, 1963 in Greensboro, North Carolina. “They say they will love, comfort, honor each other to the end of their days.  They say they will cherish each other and be faithful to each other always.  They say they will do these things not just when they feel like it, but even—for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health—when they don’t feel like it at all.  In other words, the vows they make at a marriage could hardly be more extravagant, they give away their freedom.  They take on themselves each other’s burdens.  They bind their lives together in ways that are even more painful to unbind emotionally, humanly, than they are to unbind legally.  The question is, what do they get in return?

They get each other…

They never have to face the world quite alone again…they both still have their lives apart as well as a life together.  They both still have their separate ways to find.  But a marriage made in heaven is one where they become more richly themselves together than the chances are either of them could ever have managed to become alone.  When Jesus changed the water into wine at the wedding in Cana, perhaps it was a way of saying more or less the same thing.” (from Whistling in the Dark)

Thank you, Jud, for binding your life with mine so we could  become “more than we’d have managed to become alone.” I take comfort and strength from your love,  humor,  faithfulness,  courage,  steadfastness and our children on this our anniversary. It’s been a good day, a very good day, all things considered.