I love my wife for so many reasons (see last years blog 17 Years and Counting). One of the things I love about her, and our relationship, is that in all our years of marriage, we have neither become tired of each other’s company nor exhausted our conversations.
I remember when we were dating, we would look around a restaurant and notice seasoned couples who seemed to have nothing to talk about. They just sat and looked at their plates, eating and never said anything to each other. I remember telling Jennifer many times that when we are older and married a while, I don't want to be like that. I don’t ever want to sit in a restaurant across from her and have nothing to talk about. That would just make me feel so sad.
We always have something to discuss. We always have stories to tell each other. We always have things to laugh about. We have spent many nights over the years sharing a bowl of chips and Queso or salad and endless baskets of breadsticks while having the best conversations of our lives with each other. I love those moments. I love those memories.
Those orchestrated moments have been farther apart and fewer in number in recent years, but Monday I look so forward to having one again. We will celebrate 18 years of marriage on that day and though there are many things about that to which we look forward, the thing to which I look most forward is sitting down across a table for lunch and just enjoying our conversation.
We will sit and discuss the fact that it is just the two of us and we will try our best to recall what we did with our time before our children required it. We will joke about what it is like to simply ask for a table for two instead of seven. We wont need kids menus or high chairs. We will be excited that the cost is significantly less as a result, and we definitely will not be getting stared at while seeing our kids being counted by others and the details our life theorized. People are funny.
We don’t have that rule you hear in sit-coms about not discussing the children on our date - we love to talk about them. While doing so, we will also reference the fact that we are without the constant need of our children wanting crayons, trying to reach the chips, playing with the salt & pepper shakers, or having to go to the restroom at the same time. We won’t have to worry with forks loudly banging on the table, spilled beverages, straw sheathes blown from the straw at us, or deciding whether to bribe with ice cream for good behavior. We will find ourselves enjoying the moment of childlessness. It takes a little bit for the stillness of that moment to sink in.
For me, the alone, adult time is nice, but not so much because they are not around. It is because when the children are not around, I also see that it is each other we still so deeply enjoy. Moments such as these are not void ones either - there is no awkward spot where suddenly we don’t know what to do with ourselves. Though our children are missed, they are not what holds our relationship together. Their absence from us, even for a little while, reminds us that it is not our children that have kept us committed in our relationship - it has been the relationship itself. Our calling to submit to oneness with one another.
My bride has been my bride since before the foundation of the world, and I have been her groom. We have weathered many things together by now and anticipate an array of experiences to come. Our life has been so full and blessed with surprises thus far, and has been an adventure beyond anything we would have knowingly signed up for 18 years ago.
I love my wife, and I still love calling her “my wife”. I love that she loves me. I love that we love being together. I love that I love her far more today than I did back then. Back then I didn’t think I could possibly love her more...but, I do.
I Corinthians 13:13
But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.
