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30 Years of Matrimony
By John W. Kennedy | June 17, 2008
Today marks three decades of wedded bliss for my wife, Patty, and me. Of course it all hasn’t been bliss. It’s been sickness and health, richer and poorer, better and worse. Marriages that survive must endure many heartaches and unexpected turns.
As I reminisce about that muggy day in a rural Iowa church 30 years ago, I’m reminded how uncertain life is. I didn’t know that my sister Margaret would die the following year. Or that Jim, my best friend growing up and one of my groomsmen, would die in a head-on car crash a few years later.
I didn’t know that Patty and I would be blessed with three sons before her hysterectomy at 32. Or that I would be fired from my first newspaper job because I helped form a local pro-life group. We learned Philippians 4:19 firsthand as God supplied all our needs during four months of unemployment.
Certainly, as someone who grew up in a small town in Iowa, I didn’t foresee ever living in Sacramento and later the Chicago suburbs to pursue my career. How could I have predicted that I would move to Springfield, Mo., working within blocks of where my parents grew up in the 1920s?
As I recited those vows so long ago I didn’t understand that my wife would endure a five-year debilitating illness that threatened the viability of our marriage. Or that she would emerge from that awful period with her health miraculously restored. During that difficult, confusing interim, she often quoted Oswald Chambers: “If through a broken heart God can bring His purposes to pass in the world, then thank Him for breaking your heart.”
Sadly, I look back over all the friends we’ve known in churches over the years and count as many broken marriages as intact ones. For one reason or another, many couples—usually one but not both of the parties—decided to call it quits along the way.
Through all the surprises and disappointments one fact is clear: God is in control. Without Him it’s impossible to meet the uncertain challenges that face us beyond 30 years.
Topics: marriage |
June 18th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
Congratulations! I love the picture!
June 20th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
Congratulations on your thirty years. My wife and I are contemporaries of yours and have been married for 33 years and married at 17 years of age. God has been incredibly faithful to us and, like you and your wife, we have weathered a few storms in our years this side of Heaven. As a pediatrician, I see great young couples all the time with young children that throw in the towel after a few years of marriage and I see the toll it takes in these young lifes for years to come. Charlie Peacock has a line in one of his songs that says, “I almost traded it all away, traded diamonds for clay, I almost gave it all away.” May God bless you both and bless the marriages of those who call Jesus our Lord and Savior.
June 23rd, 2008 at 9:33 pm
Congratulations to you and your wife! God is in control…I’m counting on that!