Why I'm Not Looking Forward To My 50th Anniversary

Yesterday I attended a 50th wedding anniversary party for my friends Vera Jeanne and Steve. Fifty. Years. It's a monumental accomplishment, for sure. People don't stay married that long these days. People are fickle and selfish and prone to wander. Staying put is counter cultural. Counter fallen world.

But as I reflected on Vera Jeanne and Steve's fifty years together it wasn't so much their accomplishment I found myself thinking about. Instead, I couldn't help marveling, What an unbelievable grace.

A few months back the elders of my church prayed over my husband, Justin. One of them prayed about our marriage and our work together. He prayed we'd grow old together. Justin came home and told me about it, and both of us were struck silent by the idea.

We'd never dared to hope it.

My grandmother died when she was 52. My brother died at 20. My grandfather almost died every five years for thirty five years.

Just barely 23 when he started, Justin conducted ten funerals his first two years preaching--one for a twenty something guy who fell asleep with a piece of candy in his mouth and choked to death. Justin worked for Hospice, too. One day he arrived at a patient's house to find a crew cleaning blood off the walls and his patient, still alive when he'd left the office, newly dead.

All we have is now.

Jesus' brother James said, "Now listen, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.' Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes."

Maybe you're thinking this post is depressing. But it's not. It doesn't have to be.

You see, when you live as if today is all you have, you fully enjoy today. And when tomorrow rolls around you receive it like the gift it is, a luxurious grace. You thank God you got to kiss your spouse today, you got to sit on the porch and drink coffee, you got to make love one more beautiful time. You thank God you got to see a sunset and do good work and hug your kids and laugh. All of it becomes for you the gift it actually is.

When, however, you expect tomorrow, it loses its delight. Suddenly the day has to live up to the day you've planned, the day you've saddled with expectations.

My husband said to me the other day, "I don't want you to die and me to have to live through all the days I've already lived alongside you in my head." He said, "I want to be thankful for the days I got and never expect even one day more."

And I nodded.

This life, the life I live alongside my husband and kids especially, is too good to expect. I don't deserve a moment of it. And if God decided tomorrow to take it away, I'd understand. Because it was always, always more than I had any right to.

Maybe I'll have a fiftieth wedding anniversary one day. If I do, I'm sure I'll be immeasurably grateful. But right now, three days after my fifteenth, I'm grateful, too. I'm thankful for every day I've been given.

I'm trying--trying so hard--not to grab at the future, at days not-yet, days I'll accept one at a time, in time, as my Lord and Master wills.