Today is our 7th wedding anniversary. Looking back 7 years ago today two naive 22-year-olds wore huge smiles on our faces as we soaked in the best day of our lives. We were so happy and in love, and looked forward to a lifetime of that same happiness and we faced the world together.
A good friend of mine recently told me of the engagement of a niece of hers, just 19 years old, who will be married this winter. Neither of us had to say a word, we just exchanged knowing sympathetic smiles. It's not that we aren't happy for her, but that we know what's coming.
We have this beautiful, fun love, we join our hearts in Christ and give ours lives to each other and then we sit back and wait to watch the magic of "happily ever after" happen. Except, we're not living in a children's fairy tale. So instead, "life" happens. You fight about cleaning and cooking and toothpaste and long showers and always being late. Your time that you couldn't wait to spend with each other gets pulled between obligations to extended family, friends, work and un-shared interests and you struggle to find the balance. And then just when you feel you have that figured out, the really tough stuff happens. Someone loses their job, the car breaks down, the bills pile up, grandparents pass away, or the unthinkable happens and you lose your child to a miscarriage. It can be easy at the inexperienced age of 22 to look around and wonder just what happened to your promised "happily ever after".
But here is where the smile comes in. Because my friend and I, both married in our early 20s, know that all of that hard stuff is coming for her niece, but we also know that it's in the midst of all that struggle and especially in facing it together that true joy is found.
My husbands mother wrote to him in a birthday card in one of our first years of marriage that "the best years are yet to come." It seems odd in a birthday card when we usually feel after we turn 21 we stop looking forward to the birthdays and instead hope to avoid getting older and the time passing by on us. But she was so absolutely right. We were so in love then. We had so much fun together and were free to do whatever we wanted and the world was at our fingertips. We were eternally optimistic about the future and the happiness it held for us having never been really "hurt" by life. In the last 7 years we've faced hurt that we could have never imagined as we've said goodbye to 8 children that went to heaven early. We've had more arguments about where we spend our money and time than I could possibly count. We've cried more tears in 7 years than I imagined we would in a lifetime, and I find myself wondering if I had known 7 years ago just how hard it would be if I would have walked down that isle. Because you probably couldn't have convinced me then, that it would be in the midst of all of that suffering and hardship that we would really find the true joy our hearts were searching for. I wouldn't have understood then that no hearts are bound as close as those that hold each other up while they lay their child in the ground or that his "I love you" is so much more sincere after I'd just been incredibly rude to him in a fight. And I'm quite sure I never would have believed that after all of that I could love him a thousand times more than I did that day we got married.
Right now, my husband is having a pillow fight/wrestling match with our 3 year old son while our 2 month old naps close by. When my 3 year old pretends to be dad going to work he gives me a kiss goodbye and tells me he loves me like he's seen his dad do a million times. When he "comes home" he says "Hey Babe! Did you have a good day?" in the sweetest, most sincere voice ever, just like his dad. It's in moments like these that I know my mother-in-law was so, so right when she told us then that the best years are yet to come.
The readings today at Mass, echoed the same as they spoke about the kingdom of heaven. Isaiah 25 says "he will destroy death forever, he will wipe away the tears from every face." And Matthew 22's parable of the kingdom of heaven being like a wedding feast. It's then that we can realize that an even greater joy comes in hearing the laughter of my husband and children, soaking up the beautiful moment and knowing that it's only going to get better: "the best is yet to come." This beautiful family I have been given is just a glimpse of the joy that's waiting in heaven. So, just like we did so many years ago when that birthday card came in the mail, we'll keep on enjoying the present, our hearts overflowing with the knowledge that the best is yet to come. I can almost see God's sympathetic smile as I'm sure he knows the struggles we still have to face and the joy that's waiting.
