Thanks for Fifty Years

June 17, 2011

Dear Mom and Dad,

Today, we celebrate fifty years of your marriage. In a world marked by popular fads, passing trends, and quick fixes, which too often treats marriage as a matter of convenience to be entered at one’s leisure and ended at one’s desire, your marriage shines as a marriage to be honored and an example to be followed. So today I say, “Thank you.” 

Thank you for your example of love and commitment to one another. Through everything that God has brought your way in life, you have walked through it together, showing us what it means to love and ቶ commit to a life lived with your spouse “for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, ‘til death do you part.” In both joy and pain, you have served each other faithfully and well. Thanks for showing us what it means to love.

           

Thank you for your example of longevity. Fifty years is an amazing milestone, one that has become rare in a time where integrity and permanence are too easily exchanged for ease and immediacy. Fifty years ago you made promises, and for fifty years you have kept them. Thanks for showing us what it means to do what you said you would do.

Thank you for your example of following God. Through the years of our lives, we have been constantly shown the importance and centrality of following after God. You have loved God, his Word, and his Church, and you taught us to do the same. You have taught, not just in word but by life itself, that there something bigger that we must live for and follow after. You have believed that God was supreme over all things, and that life belonged to him, and you lived that way. Thanks for showing us what it means to be a Christian.

You have left to your children and grandchildren a legacy that will not be easily surpassed. It certainly will never be forgotten. It reminds us that it is possible to have a marriage lived the way God designed, lasting for a half-century and longer.

Should I reach the age of 84, may it be said that by God’s grace I loved and cared for the same woman for fifty years because I saw it in my parents who taught me by example what God said marriage was to be.

We honor you today as an example of loving God and your spouse more than yourself.

I love you both.