On Thursday we celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary, and I’ve been sitting (metaphorically not literally) with what I wanted to write and share. We were incredibly lucky to have two days away WITHOUT CHILDREN, and I have lots of pretty photos and stories. But I didn’t want to just do the ‘romantic couples mini-break’ post without sharing some of what I’ve been reflecting on.

(I write this knowing everyone’s story is different. If marriage is a painful topic for you, I see you, and I love you, and I’m sorry. I can only write from my own experience, and I want to be honest and real. I hope you know how precious you are, whatever your story, wherever your journey is taking you right now. You are wanted. You are needed. You are loved.)

Liam and I have never been together continuously for more than six weeks. On that occasion of extended paternity leave, we had a three week old baby, moved house, and went to adoption panel for two other children. So we’ve never spent a long stretch of time together without work or big life events filling the weeks.

Welcome 2020, our 15th year of marriage, and Covid-19. Liam was put on furlough early on in March, and therefore all 8 of us have been together for 5 months. This has of course, brought ups and downs. We have had lots of fun, enjoyed family time, worked together on projects, and been grateful. When I was blogging our lockdown days, a friend told me that Liam came off well in my writing, and I’m glad. Because there’s been so much good in these months together.

But in true transparency, we’ve also annoyed each other beyond belief. Disagreed over how we parent. Wished the other one would do the washing up. I’ve sulked at him being in ‘my space’. I’ve been impatient and ungrateful and unkind. The flaws have been there, up close and personal, with no work to escape to, and for a long time with no other friends or family to break up the days.

We don’t have a perfect marriage. I know we are very lucky – we do like each other. We do laugh. We agree on a lot of important things. We have each other. There are so many things about my husband I am thankful for. And I know that’s not everyone’s experience.

But it’s not always a smooth ride either. We fought hard for this relationship before we even said ‘I do’. When others were questioning our decision, we stepped back and considered and decided we were serious. And that made our vows significant. And gave us a stubborn determination to make this work. And we made promises before God, trusting He’d walk with us.

And He has. He has given blessings above and beyond what I could have imagined. But there are days and weeks and months sometimes, when it can look like ‘until death us do part’ is an impossible dream. When the irritations are more than irritating. When we hurt each other. When love is conditional.

And there have been points over 2020 when absence might have made the heart grow fonder. And days where I knew I was being grumpy and selfish and complaining and I prayed, ‘God, let me see this man like you see him. Open my eyes to who you’ve created him to be, and the gifts he brings to the world. Help me to love him more.’

And then something happened.

A few weeks ago we went for a walk with my family and faced one of the scariest moments I’ve known in a long time. As we walked over a bridge, five adults and six children meandering over the river, Liam suddenly shot past me, and threw his phone at me with a look of determination on his face that I didn’t recognise. As I said ‘what’s wrong?!’, he shouted ‘he’s drowning’, ran down the river bank, and straight into the river. He swam across to a little boy, and as he got there, a second head bobbed up from under the water. He swam confidently back, fighting the undercurrent, whilst cradling the five year old boy, who we wrapped up, warmed up, pinked up, and returned to his terrified mother.

We walked back, very shaken but grateful that we’d walked that route. Grateful the little boy was ok. Grateful we’d been in the right place at the right time.

And as the week went by it made me think. There were five adults walking over that bridge, and only Liam spotted that the little boy down in the river was in trouble. The rest of us were distracted by other things going on. Liam walks and talks or drives and talks, but he notices things I’m oblivious to – birds hidden down on the river bank, cars about to do a risky manoeuvre, the child struggling in the river. He also happens to be the strongest swimmer out of anyone there. He swam competitively as a youth, and he is still happiest in the sea or a lake, whereas when I was in school I was told by the lifeguard to get out of the wave machine in the swimming pool because I looked like I was going to drown. He faces fears head on, and would do anything to help someone else. He had no second thought about going in that river, when I was already worrying he might drown too. And where some people would proclaim their heroic story loudly from the rooftops, he wanted it played down. He’d say ‘anyone would have done the same’, but I’m not sure I could have done.

And it occurred to me that maybe God was using that incident to answer my prayer and opening my eyes. To the fact that often I grumble or complain because Liam isn’t who I think he should be. He isn’t like me, or he isn’t doing the things I think he should, reacting in the way I think is best. But the truth is, that’s a really good thing. I’m overwhelmingly grateful that we are not the same. That Liam is gifted in ways I absolutely am not. That he is who God made him, that he brings to me and to our marriage and to our family and to the world things that God knows we need.

When I look back to 15 years ago, I know we were naive. We made promises and meant them, but didn’t really know what that might look like in real life.

We went to a wedding where the vicar said to the couple, ‘I didn’t ask you will you promise to be in love, but do you promise to love’. Because being in love is how you feel, promising to love is a choice.

So no, I could never have known 15 years ago what we might face. And I didn’t know the work it would take and that sometimes choosing love would be really hard. But I also didn’t know the ways the tattooed motorbike riding rugby playing swimmer from South Wales would encourage my faith, the way he’d say a resounding yes to loving children who don’t share his DNA, the way he’d always choose the quiet overgrown path to wander and find hidden beauty, the way he’d inspire me to be brave, the way he’d cheer me on, the way he’d put family first, the way he’d help me to see my own gifts and to not need to seek other people’s approval.

And I’m grateful that even though his jokes have not improved (or even changed) over the years, I now laugh out of tiredness and familiarity (and sometimes hysteria). And often I quote the woman in the ring shop when we were looking at wedding rings, who adopted the sales technique of telling him ‘oh, you’re so witty!’. I might add a little note of sarcasm, just to keep him humble.

I’m grateful we made those vows. I’m grateful for the family and friends who have come alongside us and spur us on. I’m grateful for a husband who sees me at my most unlovely and chooses to love me. I’m grateful for a God who showed us what sacrificial love really looks like. I’m grateful for 15 years, journeying roads we could never have imagined, through joy and pain we never dreamt of, and being gifted new mercies we don’t deserve. And I’m grateful that today we get to choose love again.

‘By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth’. – 1 John 3:16-18

‘Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends’. – John 15:13

10 ‘In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.’ – 1 John 4:10-11