at that point: the anniversary post.

Sometime near the end of summer camp it happened.

Our marriage made it to Year Sixteen.

Sixteen years in.

We’re at that point in our years together that our wedding gifts are looking pretty battered.

A decade and half of years will do that, you know.

The couple of towels that are still remaining after all those years are shaggy and worn and are mostly used for cleaning up messes or protecting furniture when you move it.

The dishes – they look pretty chipped.

The sets are no longer all together.

For every one whole piece another piece has been broken or chipped or cracked.

I have more cracked dishes than whole these days and nothing really matches anymore.

The eight piece set of dessert plates are all gone now.

And the dinner plates?   I think we have three survivors.

And you reach that point that you start to ask – do I buy all new stuff?

Do I ditch the old?

Do I keep the old and display them with the new?

Do I mix and match?

What do I do?

And I am inclined to answer –

I keep it all.

I stack the chipped with the whole.

At dinner the kids might be eating from green plates and we might have white.

I keep the old on the shelf with the new and I serve from them both daily.

I think it’s just about as perfect an analogy as they come.

The old with the new.

Just like our marriage.

The chipped with the whole.

The beautiful mess that I always call our lives.

The pretty and the ugly.

The scars and the healings.

All of it.

And I sometimes wish I had all eight of the plates still together and matching.

I wish our dinner table had matching silverware and coordinating cups and look-alike plates, just like a magazine ad.

But the food still tastes the same.

Sometimes even better for all the hodge podge we have known and survived and endured.

And I am looking for thriving.

(Like the phoenix from the ashes.)

Don’t look for perfection when you dine at our table.

Don’t expect to be sitting beside someone whose fork matches yours or whose glass has the same cute logo.

You won’t find that here.

You won’t find coordinating perfection in our place settings.

Or in our Story.

But we’ve made it this far.

Sixteen.

And we’re looking to the future –

for more years of mismatched beauty and piled up treasures.

For another decade of redemption and restoration.

Grace and endurance.

We want some of what we’ve had – sure.

But mostly we want more –

piled high and higher –

of undeserved mercy and unimaginable opportunity.