Today Mike and I celebrate our 15th wedding anniversary. We thought 10-15-05 was a great cribbage date, and we’ll take our two points now for hitting 15 years.
Father Clay married us, using the same wedding homily still posted on the St. Stan’s web site. I most remember the giggles he got in the early part of the homily about how we must both be looking at each other thinking we sure look nice but we won’t always be so lovable. What hits me today as I read it is the section below. About the moment you feel safe in being loved. It took me a long time. I’d be frustrated that no matter what I did I couldn’t make him love me more.
And then, one day, I realized, he just loves me. I don’t have to do anything to continue to earn his love. It’s just there. It was the safest I’d ever felt, and that sense of safety continues to fuel and buoy me.
Wedding Homily
Love is beautiful. But love is also tough. The reason that it is so hard is that we
want people to be our way.
But Katie, as you begin to believe — he loves me. He really does. Just for me.
Not just for all my beautiful parts but for my funny and strange ones too. You
will be able to tell him who you really are. Not because you have to or are forced into it. You will tell him gladly and freely because you feel safe in being loved.
It takes a long time for this to happen. So many things you have to experience
through the years: the good and the bad, the joys and the sorrows. Sometimes
you hearts will sing and sometimes they will break. But if you face these things
together, talk them through, work them through and suffer through them, at
some point it will sink into you. He loves me for me. Katie. When that
happens, Mike will become irreplaceable to you.
Everybody cannot become that for everybody. I pray that you can become that
for each other. If you find that, there is nothing better in this whole wide world.
You will have found the pearl of great price, the beginning of the reign of God.
I encourage you to pray. As we are in contact with God, the way that God is,
slowly and painfully seeps into us. And how does God love us? Just as we are.
God knows our sins, our faults, our mistakes and our flaws. God know that
sometimes we are even kind of weird. God knows all these things about us and
just loves us.
I encourage you to pray. Pray together sometimes. We are often embarrassed
to do this. I understand because prayer is extremely intimate. A way you might
do it- just be alone with each other; believe that God is there. You don’t have to
say a word out loud if you don’t want to. Just be quiet and let the Love we
name God into your hearts and your lives.
If you do that faithfully, you will change. Not by any certain date but you will change. I pray that when you have been married 50 years, you love each other a thousand
times more than you do today.
Dear People Whom God Loves 