We had a rather quiet anniversary yesterday. Last year we celebrated our 50th on the Oregon Coast with children, grandchildren and my always adventurous brother Pete who flew from New York to be with us. It was a very special week. We ate fresh crab, grilled steak and ate gobs of cake, played card games, and wove our bikes through the crowds on the boardwalk. The children collected sand dollars and discovered transparent jelly fish abandoned at low tide. The beach sandpapered their skin. We walked for miles along the shore, looking for shells, examining the secrets hidden in the tidal pools with the little ones, dipping our toes into the still frigid Pacific Ocean. Mostly Dan and I felt blessed by our family and thanked God that we were together, enjoying ourselves.

Yesterday, I brought out our yellowing wedding album and left it on the kitchen counter. Dan and I flipped through the photos and wondered who “those children” were. We looked so vulnerable and young. I confess to shedding a few tears as I saw the beloved faces of parents, sibling, friends long gone now. I gave Dan a card inscribed with my heart, watching him grin at the sentiment. Then, we left the house for a day trip. I’d packed the wicker picnic basket and filled it up with love and more food than two people need. Astoundingly, we found an unoccupied spot along Upper Payette Lake with large shade trees and huckleberry bushes carpeting the ground. The sound of the river falling over rocks quieted me as nothing else can. Dan didn’t need much to quiet him: he had a book, a folding chair and time away from his office. Within minutes he was napping next to me, despite the pesky, buzzing flies and the furnace like heat. All is well with us.

There is such a peace with one another when you’ve been married for half a century, when you’ve endured pain and sorrow that you could never imagine and which a merciful God keeps hidden from you on your wedding day. The grace of God has fallen on our marriage and on our family. The Lord picked us out of the ash heap and cleaned up the mess. It is a miracle. I am still astounded by a God who cares for His children, fiercely, unceasingly, minutely personal. He saved my soul and then He gave me everything I always wanted in our marriage: trust, joy, security, a loyal friend and above all love. Above all His love poured out like a river of honey on a hot summer day.

It is an irony that the Supreme Court ruled on same sex marriage almost on our anniversary. Because of that, I am compelled to write and to testify to the contrary of the Court’s decision. I want to thank God for Dan and my 51 years together. Without God in our life, we would not have made it. I praise Him for the bedrock of faith He’s establishing in our children and grandchildren. Without Him, there would be no hope for our offspring. I want to testify that the essence of marriage comes from the Word, from God’s Spirit for it says:

Did he not make them one, with a portion of the Spirit in their union? And what was the one God seeking? Godly offspring. Mal 2:15

It is not defined by any court, by any social movement, by any relativism, revisionism or rationalism. Marriage is not about legal interpretations or playing around with semantics. Marriage is covenantal, between the lesser and the Greater. Dan and I are the former. The Lord who ordained our marriage in His Word is the Greater. What judicial declarations to the contrary can stand against that?

There is an urgent call for married Christians to declare God supreme in their marriages. There is a desperate need to be visible Light and Salt for those who are so lost they grasp at all legal straws, hoping to cure innate brokenness, loneliness and deception. What better way to affirm what the courts try to negate than to praise God who ordained Biblical marriage and who “made them one flesh” , to thank Him, declare Him and model His Word.
Friede