Twenty-five Years Is a Very Short Time

That's how long it's been -- a quarter century since Adam and I stood in a church and before God and all those witnesses, and said, "We do."

Lovely invitation, but Adam's name is misspelled. For years he thought his middle name had two r's in it!

Digging through old photo albums, I found the one I used as our "wedding album." I was one organized girl, back in those days.

I kept lots of things. Adam was a waiter at a trendy, old-mill restaurant downtown. He was a very good waiter.

Adam's mother wrote a weekly column for the county newspaper, and I kept all her articles from during this time. It's a nice blow-by-blow account as we approached the wedding.

It was a lovely wedding. Here's our cake. We kept the top layer for that one-year-anniversary treat, but the power went out several times that year, and our freezer thawed, and the cake was ... well, yeah. We threw it out.

Late July in Mississippi is HOT. Three of my bridesmaids kept us entertained at the rehearsal dinner. What fun they all are! Don't we miss being in our 20s, girls?

Our honeymoon was rather involved. We drove two solid days from Jackson, Mississippi to Ocracoke Island, NC. We barely made the ferry that second night! Here I am, sitting on the Cedar Island Ferry, a bit bedraggled.

One of my favorite shots of Adam. He was slim with great features and fabulous curly, dark hair. Sigh.

We stayed at a little B-and-B for a few nights. I recently emailed the still-owner to see if we could return for a night or two, but she quickly told me that she mostly only books for full weeks now. Oh well.

Our first Halloween in our little seminary apartment. Clearly I had started cutting my husband's lovely locks, and he has a cropped look. Why did I do that?

Our first Christmas.

These are such poor quality photos -- sorry. We were so poor in seminary. The red  union suits were Adam's before we got married. The apartment didn't have overhead lighting in the living room, and I had no lamps at first, so you see the little clamp light I have attached to the window sill. And I hung baskets from the ceiling! Never much of a decorator, I'm afraid! Thankfully, Adam isn't picky.
Less than a year later, you see Adam is pudging up just slightly from all my spaghetti and meatloaf, plus a few of his bratwurst. I'm plumper too, but that's because I'm about 3-4 months pregnant with our first baby, Philip. The diploma I'm holding is mine -- my master's degree in English. Good thing I finished it then, because there was no time for it later!

Soon we started having several of these ~

And I won't go on and on. Twenty-five years. So much change, to be honest. We hardly resemble the people we were then. We were so stubborn, so argumentative, so grumpy, so quick to take offense. But we were young, and we assumed there were years ahead to change and learn, and there were. We had so many heart-aches, so many troubled years. But in the end, it's the relationship, the marriage itself, that comes out of the fire glistening and a bit more purified. I'm so thankful we've both stayed the course. When each spouse reaches out to the other, hoping to find a sympathetic hand, and repeatedly finds it, a bond of trust and delight is formed that is like no other. May it continue another twenty-five years.