Love endures all things
Love is patient. Love is kind…
Even the most rebellious twenty-somethings will generally concede to a little of Saint Paul's musings on the big day.
On Memorial Day weekend 2009, my wife and I decided on standard vows and agreed that the DJ would fade into "All you need is love" when they pronounced us husband and wife.
The officiant said he could wing it, and while he kept things mellow, we wound up getting Corinthians, which was a bit of a surprise. I was still clinging to my anti-establishment roots and wanted nothing to do with anything remotely square, religious, or traditional, but the ceremony meant a lot to me.
Katie looked gorgeous, and at that moment, I couldn’t focus on anything but her.
My now 40-year-old self thinks Corinthians is pretty rad because when I'm patient and kind, my marriage runs smoothly. Putting religion, art, or philosophy aside, some one-liners stick around because they are universally valid.
It takes lots of patience and kindness to manage the circus of the modern family and to hold boundaries with small, hungry, and emotionally turbulent children. Communication becomes the one skill that the entire foundation rests on.
I'm a night owl who flies by the seat of my pants, and I lean a bit manic with a handful of projects in various stages of completion or abandonment. I'm a coffee-addicted Type A personality who rarely sits down, and I speak in abstractions when a simple yes or no would often do the trick.
Nicholas Sparks could write a half-dozen novels for all the ups and downs and different people my wife and I have been.
Paul was spot on in his letter to Corinth.
You must be patient and kind to keep a union together, and that's especially true when you marry a person like me. In the age when people are willing to discard commitment so callously, there may be no better vehicle for personal growth than the marriage vow.
Mine has been an old-school romance of peaks and valleys. Two kids, two working parents, and enough minivan adventures to fill the memoir I don't have time to write.
The last ten years of my life feel like a blur.
It's been great.
It’s been hard.
It's been worth it.