A 12th Lesson from Our 12th Year of Marriage

We’ve been at this crazy little thing called lifelong love for 12 years, 5 months, and 16 days to be exact…. So this lesson from our 12th year of marriage is only a few days late…

(To mark our 10 year anniversary, I wrote 10 LESSONS FROM 10 YEARS OF MARRIAGE. Then I followed up with LESSON 11. I’ve been humming and hawing since the summer over what lesson 12 would be.

The 12th year of our marriage was probably one of the fullest. And for numerous reasons, probably one of the most challenging.

When you’re at the 10+ year mark, you’re past the majority of new stuff that is naturally accompanied by excitement. New houses, cars, babies, jobs, moves and other new things typically characterize the first 10 years of marriage, but after you hit this strange season of what can feel a lot like maintenance. Work can get stressful. Parenting seems to get more challenging. Life seems to get more expensive. It can feel like there’s a lot to maintain and maintenance isn’t typically something that stirs up a great deal of excitement.

When things get challenging, it’s easy to forget what’s important for the sake of wanting things to change. But something has become increasingly clear to me over this past year.

At the end of the game, only one thing matters.

It’s not what you want to change, what you wish was different, or where you want to go. All good things. But they’re not the the thing.

A friend recently shared with me that the word “priorities” didn’t used to exist in the plural. It was a singular word: “PRIORITY.” Apparently back in the day you didn’t have many things that were important to you. You had one. You had a single priority. And it got, wait for it… priority.

It got me to thinking— what is the priority of my marriage?

What if it wasn't to change, blame, or criticize? Instead of pointing out what could change, you pointed out the things that have. Instead of pointing out things that fall short, you pointed but the things that he does well. Instead of complaining about what isn’t, you thanked him for what it?

What if the priority of my marriage was really simple? To love Him well.

I have this sneaking suspicion that on glory day when I’m standing before God and He’s asking mw what we did with what was entrusted to mw (see Matthew 25), that I may realize I was not just entrusted with gifts, time and money, but I was entrusted with God’s great possession: people.

He has entrusted to you and I PEOPLE. Especially, our people. Will we love them well?

Marriage is challenging. There’s always something that needs changing. But in the midst of the challenges and the changes, can we make it our PRIORITY to love him well?

On our 12th anniversary date after he convinced me that we didn’t need to talk about all the things that needed changing… we could simply enjoy being together.

Can we we the soft place to land in the midst of a harsh world? Can we be the safe place his defences can be laid down because nothing is attacking him? Can we be kind when he walks in the door from a critical world?

If at the end of my life, he can say, “No other human being loved me like she did,” I think that will have been and marriage and a life well lived. I think that will be the one thing that matters for us.

What does loving him well look like? Maybe a little like this—

4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

If I don’t, then I am a noisy nothing who has gained nothing.

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poorand give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

1 Corinthians 13:1-7, 13.

READ THE FIRST 10 HERE! and catch up on LESSON 11 here