happy anniversary.
Nineteen.
If you’re talking about grains of rice or hairs on your head,
that’s a little number.
But I’m not talking about food or hair.
I’m talking years.
Years.
And suddenly,
nineteen is kind of a giant number.
Nineteen.
A number that sort of takes my breath away.
Today marks nineteen years since I traded my last name for his
wearing blue Chuck Taylors and my momma’s wedding dress.
Nineteen years since I stood in a field by a stream on a farm in Virginia and said “I do”.
It’s not a golden anniversary, I guess,
but it’s a good solid stack of years we’ve piled up as Husband and Wife.
And when I think of how we’ve made it from newlywed to parents of six,
from fresh-faced to faded jeans,
from There to Here,
I have to close my eyes a little and breathe out one single word …
grace.
I can say it over and over.
It’s the anthem of our marriage.
(Of all marriage really.)
Grace. Grace. Grace.
And I love the tremendous bounty of the manners in which this grace has greeted us –
the people who have been grace to us.
The situations,
the circumstances
that have spoken grace.
The words and the opportunities.
Beautiful,
humbling,
incredible
grace.
Nineteen years.
And if there’s been a single thread that has held us in place
despite our unraveling selves
it can only be
grace.
Nineteen.
How grateful I am to be hemmed in by glorious grace.
6 Comments
Helen
19 years and counting! What lovely thoughts concerning your marriage. And you’re right …only grace…..for all our marriages. I was at this wedding in the field by the stream on a farm in Va and it was a beautiful location and melding of two lives together. We just celebrated 37 years and they just keep going by so fast!
laceykeigley
37. My word.
That’s fabulous.
And we are so glad you were there!
Tiffany
Happy Anniversary! (Ditto on the wedding photos! It does sound lovely.)
laceykeigley
Thank you! And – in those photos – we look like children playing dress up! 🙂
Alicia
Happy anniversary. I’d love to see pictures of that wedding beside a stream in Virginia. It sounds perfect.
laceykeigley
Maybe I can wrangle some up – but I can tell you this, it was lovely, but it was blazingly hot and comically far from perfect!