The Broken Road

This past Tuesday, March 9, was a momentous occasion. There should have been a ticker-tape parade. The U.S. Postal Service should have issued a commemorative stamp. There should have been special news bulletins.

It was our fourth wedding anniversary. My favorite holiday.

I know to people who have been married twenty or thirty years, it must seem silly that I'm excited over four little years. Let me tell you, it was a long, hard road to get to these four years.

This story begins when I was in the eighth grade. I was in love with a boy we'll just call "J". Or at least, what passes for love in the eighth grade: I laughed at whatever he did, whether it was funny or not, and he stole my notebook and hid it from me. Anyway, at the end of the year he invited me to be his date for the Eighth Grade Banquet. Actually, "date" is a strong word for two kids who are nowhere near driving age. But I was exstatic. I wore my sister's hand-me-down banquet dress, mom did my hair, and his parents drove us.

We sat at a table with a girl I'll call "S." and her date, a guy named Kenneth who was two grades ahead of us. I danced every slow-dance with J, -except for one. I don't know why, and I don't recall the song that was playing, but for some reason I asked Kenneth to dance and he said yes.

Fast forward to the summer after I turned seventeen. We were both working at Food Lion, and had both just had a break-up with someone else, when we started talking and hit it off. The first night he called me, we literally talked for hours. We were pretty much inseperable from then on.

Eight months later, he proposed, and I couldn't say "yes" fast enough. I wasn't even eighteen yet, but I thought I understood the meaning of marraige and forever. I thought he was going to take care of me. We both thought we had time the change the parts of each other we didn't like.

I remember standing at the back of the church, zipped into my dress, veil just so, holding Daddy's arm. And he looked over at me and said, "You know you don't have to do this." And deep inside, I thought, "Yes I do! All these people are here, we have all those wedding gifts, we rented an apartment..." And I walked down the aisle.

It was more or less downhill from there. When my expectations weren't met, I nagged. He got angry. We stopped communicating. We were so young and inexperienced in life, we didn't even know how to find out what was wrong with our relationship so we could fix it. And then I think we both stopped trying.

Eighteen months after we said ,"I do," the judge said ,"You don't have to anymore." I moved back home with my parents, and it didn't take long to realize the emotion I felt the most of was...relief. I hadn't realized how miserable I had been. And though it was easy to lay the blame at his door, the truth is it takes two people to make a marraige work or fail.

So I moved on with my life, ignoring his attempts at reconciliation. I actually used the cliche'd phrase "over my dead body" when referring to any possibility of a future with him. I did whatever made me happy without bothering to consult a higher power. It didn't matter, he knew where to find me when the time was right.

So one night, after I was out of college and working in a dental office during the day, and helping out at Flick Video some evenings, I found myself thinking about failure, and forgiveness, and about Kenneth. I thought about what the Bible says about forgiving people. How if you pray with anything in your heart against someone, your prayer isn't heard.

So I called him. Just to apologize for the things I had done wrong, and to tell him I forgave him from the bottom of my heart. And I did.

We were married on Thursday, March 9, 2006. We met at the church after work, with a few close friends, and said our vows...again. Thirteen months later, our daughter Arabella was born. Her name means "answered prayer". She was joined this past December by her sister Abbigail.

And this past Tuesday, the florist delivered a vase with four beautiful red roses, and a card that read, "Happy Anniversary. A rose for every wonderful year."

I couldn't agree more. I love you, sweetie.

P.S. An interesting note: J and S are now married- to each other! They live not far from us, and have a beautiful little girl!