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Starring: a dad, a mom, a son & daughter-in-law, a daughter & son-in-law, another daughter & son-in-law, 1 teen, 1 grandson, 3 granddaughters, 4 dogs, and a whole lot of love.






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Monday, January 30, 2012

We did. We do. We will.


My husband and I were married on January 30th, 1993. Thinking back over the past 19 years, I'm amazed. We were High School sweethearts and we married at the young age of 21. Statistics say that 60% of marriages between the ages of 20-25 end in divorce. I would venture to guess that we had people place bets against us. In fact, I know they did.

Each year any marriage survives is worthy of a celebration, especially when you consider everything you've been through.

We have four kids ranging in age from 4 to 18, a total of 5 moves within the first 10 years, job changes early on, my return to college, etc...etc....

But the things that come to my mind first are a little different.

Let me give you a few examples:
Our marriage has survived 19 years despite the time that.....

He tied mattresses to the roof of our car with nylon string, which eventually sent them flying across the interstate into the path of an oncoming semi.

I demanded we take our dog to PetSmart, broke my promise about making the dog ride in the cart the whole time and when the dog hiked his leg and peed on a shelf of stuffed toys, I peed my pants laughing and he made me sit on a tarp all the way home.

I was having an allergic reaction and he wouldn't take me to the hospital because the Buckeyes were playing.

I got stranded on the roof of our 2 story house trying to hang icicle lights for Christmas.

He super glued a crack in our toilet seat and didn't tell me before I sat down on the wet glue. Then it dried.

In a moment of panic, I sprayed a fire extinguisher all over our living room when one of my candles broke.

He encouraged me to enter a pizza eating contest because I "could totally win."

I didn't realize the mower blade broke and continued mowing while leaving trenches across the front of our yard.

He tried to roll a partially full water bed mattress down our flight of stairs and out our front door because he got tired of waiting for it to empty. I ended up in front, he lost control, and it chased me outside onto our front yard. I was naked. The neighbors were outside.

I saw a raccoon in our yard but couldn't tell if it was dead or sleeping so I aimed the BB gun out our dining room window and accidentally shot our propane tank.

A few days after the 9/11 tragedy, he bought and filled 6 gas cans and strapped them to the roof of our van in Hilton Head on the advice of someone who informed us that our state was "all out of gas." We drove our bomb all the way home and he actually wondered why everyone was getting out of our way. I'd like to think we're smarter now. Or at the very least, we seek advice from smarter people.

When he sat in the hospital room watching basketball, eating McDonalds and asking me to "try to hold it down" while I was in labor.

He used a bow and arrow to try to shoot a raccoon in our garage but shot through our refrigerator instead.

My addiction to home remedies led him to having to dig a clove of garlic out of an area I think would be best left unspecified.

We took our kids tent camping for the first time, forgot firewood and he tried to use pot holders to gather burning embers from other campsites. He quickly found out that when you run holding burning embers, they burst back into flames. Who knew?

And yesterday at church when he leaned over and informed me that I "ruined Communion" because I started clapping for the piano solo....and I leaned over and told him to bite me.

Welcome to marriage. Crazy? Yes. Hard? Of course! Worth it? Definitely. God brought us together and God doesn't make mistakes. Although I suspect He wonders what He was thinking every now and then.

We beat the odds. We're still beating the odds. And we'll continue to beat the odds.

Because the vows don't say "I DO....for as long as we're still happy together." They say "I DO...until DEATH DO US PART." Granted, much of our marriage might be spent trying not to accidentally kill ourselves, each other, our kids or innocent bystanders, but when you're married to a person who can still give you goosebumps with one look from across a crowded room, you know you can survive anything.....even if that involves him putting a flaming match against my back because he thought he saw a tick on me.

Let's save that story for another time, shall we?

2 comments:

  1. Great stuff Shari! Sometimes I take precious time to read something and wonder why did I waste those minutes. This was NOT one of those times! Thanks for sharing and giving me a moment to pause on my own relationship of 15 years with all of its less than perfect - but hilarious moments- nonetheless. Good stuff!

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  2. Oh, this is so relevant, entertaining and heart warming! May you have many, many more years together!

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