Happy Anniversary Darling!

Today my husband and I are celebrating our 44th wedding anniversary!

Happy Anniversary to my partner in life who has shared everything there is to share in this life, and in so short a time. How could we have packed "all that living" into just 44 years.

Would we have changed anything in those years....the popular answer for most would be "not one thing", that would be a lie for us. We have learned a lot and would have changed how we did things if we had been born again when we married. We would have lived very differently had we known the Lord in the beginning.

But we were not meant to change anything, we were meant to encounter all God had for us, for our learning. After becoming born again, everything we had to work through made us stronger, we could never have learned what we have if we had done everything perfectly. We would never have come to Christ if life had been easy for us.

We have had our easy times, they didn't do very much for us, it was the trials that taught the most. As we grew in the Lord the trials didn't disappear, we just had a different perspective about them. When we see illness, we see purpose, when we see a financial difficulty we see God's provision. Everything is interpreted now in terms of God's plan!

I am thankful for our marriage and all that it has brought, all the easy, good, happy and all the trials and challenges, we had to have it all, if we were going to grow.

Why should we take all the good and avoid the difficult? What makes us think that we can have life just as we please without hardships?

Job 2:10 "But he said to her, "You speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity?" In all this Job did not sin with his lips."

So the answer to the question, "has it been a good marriage" would be, yes, it has been a great marriage, not because things were always perfect and happy, but because we have experienced it all and come through it all, loving God more and ourselves less.

The challenge for first marriages is this....don't bail out, don't run when the going gets tough, stick it out, pray more, seek God more and never give up. In the later years it gets better, and you will be so thankful you will be counted with those who celebrate many years of marriage to the one and only person you committed to in the beginning.