Note: This is the fourth in a series about our 20th anniversary year. If you want to read the background on that, go here.
It is nearing midnight which means, traditional as we are, that we must part soon. We plan for the first glimpse of one another on our wedding day to be the moment I walk down the aisle. Tomorrow. We’ve planned for this day for just over 15 months. It can’t come soon enough. Yet, we hold back. There’s no way that Jeff is going to see my dress before I walk down the aisle, but I pull out my shoes. My dress is floor length, so he probably won’t notice them tomorrow anyway. I didn’t choose high heels but neither did I choose ballet slippers. They are somewhere in between and the bottoms of them are quite slippery. Brand new, untried, decorative but unnoticed beneath the finery of flowers and lace. Just like our marriage will be tomorrow. I hand over the shoes and ask him to prepare them for me. I don’t want to slip and fall coming down the aisle or on the way to the reception hall. He stoops to one knee just as he did 15 months ago. One by one, just moments before midnight, he scuffs the bottom of each shoe, preparing them so they will hold me steady for the duration of tomorrow’s long celebration.
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Twenty years later, we have done all the special anniversary celebrations. We’ve done the overnight getaway to our wedding night cabin. We’ve gone back to our honeymoon destination several times with a big splurge on our 15th with our four kids in tow. We’ve gone on little getaway trips to Amish Country, business trips to the Regency and Ritz Carlton in Atlanta, quiet dinners and loud concerts. This time we opted for something a little simpler. Anti-climatic? Naw. Ours is the comfortable kind of marriage where we are happy together in the big and small moments.
It’s been 20 years and our marriage and our love have stayed steady. Those scuffs he put on my shoes on the eve of our wedding night must have gone a bit deeper. The friction—of tight finances, children throwing temper tantrums, health challenges, unforeseen disasters, job loss, grief, the daily mundane and holding hands while watching those we love walk away—has only served to draw us toward one another in determination.
So, on the eve of our 20th anniversary, we left the kids at home. It was only a short time ago that we had to stay home with them on our anniversary nights. Now, they wave goodbye and set the table and finish preparing their own dinner. We use a gift card and visit one of our favorite restaurants. We stroll through the mall and do a little shopping. We talk about challenges, dreams and what the next 20 years might look like. We stop for ice cream. And we come home to children who bathed on their own, a (mostly) cleaned up kitchen and hugs.
Our anniversary day will be a lot different than the wedding day 20 years earlier. I’m headed to an orthodontist appointment and the library right after popping dinner into the crockpot so we can eat just in time for us to leave for a service at church. He’s headed out to work, building his business and our dreams one box at a time. We go to get new jeans and a few dresses since kids are growing fast. Today, there’s no resemblance to the lace and flowers and soft music and vows. It’s just another day in our life. The life we only dreamed about as we said “I do”. The life gifted to us from the Great Giver of All. My imagination almost wonders if He’s not stooping down to remind us that we’re only here because He chose to give us a few “scuffs”. Those scuffs are steadying us and helping us to walk into the life He means for us to live.