Ten Years Gone
Today Anne and I celebrate our ten year wedding anniversary. She’s in Indiana and I’m in Michigan. We talked on the phone but that’s a pretty anticlimactic way of celebrating. She’s coming home tomorrow. So I must wrap up the various sundry tasks I’ve started in the family absence.
Where has ten years gone? The best marker of the time are the children. I wonder where the ten years went but then I look at Ethan and figure “there’s 7 1/2 yrs.” Then there are all the moves - Oak Park mini-apartment to big apartment to Lockport home to Fort Wayne home to Michigan vicarage and now moving back. Then the life changes - student to father to retail sales to seminarian to vicar to fourth-year something-or-other. Life is quite the journey, no doubt.
I’m thankful that in all the metamorphoses of the past ten years, one thing hasn’t changed - Christ’s forgiveness. Our marriage and family is by no means perfect - indeed far from it. Daily we die to our sin in our baptism in repentance and are given the absolution won for us.
No amount of “trying hard” can make a marriage work. Instead the spiritual care of confession and absolution (Law and Gospel) rescues the marriage. Here’s the key: it’s not our work but Christ’s work in us. I take no pride in it but recognize that it is only by God’s gracious favor we can celebrate this milestone. For the ten years granted to us I am thankful.
