Since they are no longer two but one, let no one separate them, for God has joined them together. — Matthew 19:6 NLT
My wife and I are going to the beach in North Carolina later this summer. It’s the week of vacation we’re spending with my daughter and her husband and his parents. It looks to be a good, relaxing time for all, some intentional laziness interrupted by seafood suppers, the occasional swims in the ocean, and the slow reading of good books.
We’ll also mark our 35th wedding anniversary that week. When I asked Pam what the traditional gift for 35 years was, she said she thought it was “emerald.” But I looked it up and it turns out that emeralds come at 55 years; coral and jade are for thirty-five. So, she has to live with me for another twenty years if she wants an emerald, I said.
Still, she was a good sport about it. I saw a television show not long ago about a working emerald mine that was open to the public in, of all places, North Carolina. When I asked her if she would like to go see it and dig for emeralds when were down there later this summer, she took me up on the offer. Really, she’s a treasure hunter at heart. So, if we’re lucky, this might be an emerald anniversary after all.
The list of corresponding gifts with wedding anniversaries started, apparently, in medieval Germany. Upon twenty five years, so the story goes, friends and neighbors would give to a wife a silver wreath to mark the many years of good relations. If they lived together for fifty years, a gold wreath was given. Over time, the list grew larger to include just about every year up to sixty. It starts with paper for the first year, skips through wood at five, moves to silk for the twelfth, pauses momentarily at china for twenty and eventually settles on diamonds for those lucky and persistent enough to make it a full three-score.
Marriages, in the Christian world, are supposed to be life-long relationships. And while romantic love is what brings most couples together, it is the virtue of promise keeping that keeps them together for the long haul. As anybody knows who has been married long enough to appreciate, say, the gift of wood, it’s not all romance all the time in the holy estate of matrimony. There are times when it’s the promise – sometimes only the promise – that keeps two people together.
I know that has been the case for Pam and me. I would love for the world to think our marriage has been nothing but roses and cherries with the occasional minor difference of opinion on paint color. But we’ve been through a lot and not without outside help – the encouragement of friends and family, even the occasional couch-sitting at the counselor’s office. But we’re still together.
I mean after thirty-five years, we’re still together. Maybe we’re just simpletons and don’t know any better. Maybe we’re cowards and don’t have the guts to do something else. I don’t know. I am quite reluctant to suggest it’s because we’re made of stern stuff; we’re not. Or to criticize those once-married couples who did not stay together for whatever reason. I will not judge.
But somehow or another, certainly by the grace of God, we’re still keeping our promises and we’re still together. So, whether we find anything in the emerald mine in North Carolina or not this summer, it will certainly be a gem of an anniversary.
Thoughts Along the Way 