How We Didn't Divorce

I was at work today and a lady and her husband came in for lunch. It was their fifty-nieth wedding anniversary and they do not live by a Fazoils, so when her husband asked her where she wanted to go she was thrilled to drive the forty-five minutes to come get our breadsticks.

She told me about how they have been married for fifty-nine years and no one is married for that long, it's so beyond her she says. She told me that all of her friends are divorced. She told me about how her maid of honor and her husband best man got married a few years after their wedding and they are now divorced. She said their wedding was their first date , unfortunately all of her other bridesmaids are also divorced. Everyone she knows is divorced.

I asked her what her secret was that none of her friends or family members knew and she said,

"You think about leaving, when you get mad or when you get tired of it all. Marriage is hard and you both have to work at it. That is where I think everyone has enough and they quit. We decided to stay together. Neither one of us believe in divorce. We decided that whatever comes our way we will get passed it. Now we are having our fifty-nieth wedding anniversary and passed that we have been together sixty-two years"

I told her that was beautiful and something to aspire to and gave her a few breadsticks to take for the road. She was smiling from ear to ear all giddy and told me I made her day. She was the sweetest lady. I hope that she and her husband are married for another thirty or so years. I hope she shares her story with everyone she meets. Maybe if more people thought about how to stick around in the worst of times then they would have more of the best of times.

I was thinking about what this dear lady said. At a time when I was upset with my own husband and I was thinking, "How are we going to get through this?" Or even the thought of ,"are we going to be able to get through this?" Her story of divorce and deciding to stay together when no one else could find the strength to stay.

No one stays together anymore. Everyone just runs and hides, or they give up way too easily. That is not what I want to teach my kids, and that is not what I want for myself either. I love that better or worse my husband and I somehow get through whatever mess life throws at us. We may not always get through it in the best ways, we may agure. and disagree, but we somehow get through it in some way. There are times I dont even know how we make it, or how we get though with out any scars. I guess though, we were meant to get through it.

We both look towards having a long marriage like this lady and her husband. Neither one of us believe in divorce. We do believe in taking each other to the grave with the other. We quote the song "better dig two" often enough.

In a day and age when divorce happens all to often what actually keeps marriages tight and going? What keeps love going strong instead of falling apart? My husband and myself have only been married for three years , almost three and a half years now, but I believe we are doing something right to have made it this far.