Happy Anniversary!

Today is my 2nd wedding anniversary - I have now been married 2 whole years. It feels longer because of all the things Angie and I have since that fateful day in June '05. We have: honeymooned in Indonesia, spent holidays in California, Wisconsin, New York, and North Carolina, held 5 different jobs between us, changed churches twice, moved three times (counting our first apartment), bought a house, and renovated said house while having two siblings and a dog living with us.

And now we've been accepted to seminary, and we are both seriously considering taking full-time course loads while working full time. We may just be headed for crazy town. At least we don't have kids yet.

And we're not one of the 1 of 12 marriages that don't make it past the first two years!

I sometimes wonder where I would be if I hadn't met Angie. I don't think there's any way I could have met Angie and not married her. Maybe if I'd been assigned an RA position in a different building at UNC. Or if she had decided to go back to California as soon as she finished her senior year. Or if I had actually stuck with my now infamous declaration "I am not attracted to you" (ask Angie about it; she'd love to tell you the story) and willed myself single through what would have been a painfully awkward semester.

Looking back it seems somewhat inevitable: once the pieces were in place we just followed this script that had been the plan all along (not that we knew it at the time), and the only way things could have turned differently is if we had forced ourselved to screw it up. I really do thank God we made so many good choices, and that our bad choices were forgiven and given enough grace to become points of strength in what God was building.

But what if the pieces weren't put into place? What if one of us had been assigned to a different dorm, or not even made it as an RA? Considering my aversion to dating, we might never have been anything more than acquaintances. Then where would I be? Maybe:
1. In graduate school somewhere in the US
2. On staff with Intervarsity somewhere in the US
3. Working in North Carolina
4. Working in Wisconsin, living with or near my parents
5. Not working, and still living with my parents in Wisconsin

None of these options are wholly unappealing (except perhaps number 5), and I probably would be quite content had any of them materialized. Maybe even happy.

But that would be because I would have no inkling of the kind of life I have actually had since I met and married Angie. It moves at what feels like a frighteningly breakneck speed (whereas my inclination is to plod along like a tortoise), but I mind that less and less. How could I? If it's a choice between my life with Angie and anything else I can imagine, I will choose Angie every time.

In closing, I'm going to share a few principles by which I try to live my marriage and my life:

- Be open and honest. Hide nothing. The time it takes to understand and to be understood can be laborious, but the reward is rich.
- The other person is more important than anything else I think I need. Marriage means being willing to turn my back on any part of my old life to create this new one. I may never get back some things I've given up or lost. But compared to what I've gained, it's not really that much of a loss.
- It is a myth and a lie that I will lose myself if I let anyone alter or take away "the things that make me who I am" - my preferences, habits, hobbies, dreams, opinions, expectations, beliefs, and independence - especially without my permission. In loving someone and in being loved I will change (it's inevitable!) and not necessarily in ways I expect or approve. Part of love is allowing another person to make you something you were not before he or she came along.

People cannot help but affect each other. If a man was an island, he still couldn't avoid the weather. I rub off on everyone I meet, and I get something of them rubbed off on me. The more I open myself up, the more it happens.

To live in step with this is, I think, the only hope any of us has of being completely fulfilled. Maybe the lie at the root of all our struggles is that there can be equally viable ways of living, if we will just find them (or create them). But there is no other way. We need people and we need God, just like we need food for hunger, water for thirst, and air for breathing, and it has to be that they are more imporant than ourselves, or else it won't work.

Perhaps becoming like Jesus is just learning to live in line with how things really are, to realize once and for all that every time we ask, "Are you sure it can't be that way?" Jesus will say, "No, there is only one way - my way," and we say, "Then take me that way."

If anyone stayed with me to the end of this, I always welcome feedback. I might be wrong about some or all of it. After all, I need you, don't I?

This is dedicated to my wife, who is more beautiful, smart, funny, caring, self-sacrificial, incorrigible, and loveable than I deserve. Happy Anniversary!