Although we just got home from four days in the Bay Area where we were visiting your grandparents, we are off tonight to Arizona to attend a wedding. You are already a jet setter and you aren’t even six months old yet! I appreciate how good you have been with all of the traveling and new faces.

My dear friend Karin has asked me to read the following at her wedding tomorrow. I am honored and thankful for the reminder of what marriage is and isn’t.

When you enter into marriage, you enter into life’s most important relationship. It is a gift given to bring comfort when there is sorrow, peace when there is unrest, laughter when there is happiness, and love when it is shared.

A successful marriage is not something that just happens. It takes work, it takes understanding, and it takes time. Most importantly, it takes a commitment from both of you – a commitment to do whatever it takes to make your relationship thrive and not just simply survive. A good marriage must be nurtured. Listen to these “words of wisdom” on how to create a successful marriage from a little book entitled The Art of Marriage by Wilferd A. Peterson:

The little things are the big things.
It is never being too old to hold hands.
It is remembering to say I love you at least once a day.
It is never going to sleep angry.
It is at no time taking the other for granted; the courtship should not end with the honeymoon, it should continue through all ages.
It is having a mutual sense of values and common objectives; it is facing the world together.
It is forming a circle of love that gathers in the whole family.
It is doing things for each other, not in the attitude of duty or sacrifice, but in the spirit of joy.
It is speaking words of appreciation and demonstrating gratitude in thoughtful ways.
It is not expecting the husband to wear a halo or the wife to have wings of an angel.
It is not looking for perfection in each other.
It is cultivating flexibility, patience, understanding, and a sense of humor.
It is having the capacity to forgive and forget.
It is giving each other an atmosphere in which each can grow. It is finding room for the things of the spirit.
It is the common search for the good and the beautiful.
It is establishing of a relationship in which independence is equal, the dependence is mutual, and the obligation is reciprocal.
And finally, it is not only marrying the right person, it is being the right person.

The best is yet to be and I promise that we will lay low all next week.

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