The D Word

Today is my five year wedding anniversary. Someone told me that the element of this landmark occasion is wood. Wood? Really? I think I'll head down to the local Toys R Us today and buy my honey a set of Lincoln Logs. Those are made of real wood, right?

It's our five year anniversary, for crying out loud! Five years of blissful marriage. And when I say blissful, I don't mean we haven't had our difficulties, but I mean that we've stopped to work our way through those difficulties together. We haven't gotten into anything so nasty that one of us throws the 'd' word at the other. You know the 'd' word. It's so commonplace nowadays that I wonder if someone somewhere is already working on a way to allow us to buy it out of a snack machine with that package of Doritos that never comes out of the rings. Divorce. Eck, I think I just threw up in my mouth trying to say it.

Divorce - hold on...okay, almost gagged there - runs too rampant in our family. Last count, among close family ties, we had thirteen divorces. That's ridiculous. Has this country really started taking marriage so lightly that divorce is as common as a break up in junior high? "Well, Mom, she's got a pimple now. I can't be seen with that!" or "Dad, he just didn't notice me in the dress I wore to school yesterday, so to heck with him." It sounds silly, but so do a lot of the reasons I hear people are getting separated nowadays.

I wonder if - and this is a stretch - we communicated more. Would that work, people? I know that communication is one of the keys to our strong marriage. Men, if you actually talked to your wives instead of speaking in curse words and monkey gestures, maybe they would understand what it is you're trying to say to them. And women, maybe if instead of throwing a temper tantrum and giving husbands that evil eye - YES, you know what evil eye I'm talking about because I'm getting it right now - you told your husband what's bothering you. Would that be so hard? When we're dating, we tell each other what's on our minds. We give each other limitless 'pennies for our thoughts', but it seems when some marriages get past the first year, if they make it that far, everyone clams up and decay slowly settles in.

And then everyone is in court, fighting over the house, the kids, the ugly little chihuahua that both parties only want because they think the other wants it. A house divided will not stand. Children are not to be used as pawns in your emotionally juvenile tug-of-war. And you can easily drop that little chihuahua off at the pound - I heard they take all sorts of ugly animals nowadays. Let's slide everything off the table and get back to basics, back to the reasons we married in the first place: love, friendship, companionship.

My wife and I have taken long and sometimes painful strides to right the wrong in our family patterns. 'Generational curses' is a phrase thrown around in most Christian circles to describe this not-so-uncommon phenomenon where the same pattern occurs over a number of generations, forever trapping the next generation in an endless cycle of destructive habits, unethical beliefs, and immoral deeds.

Everyone in our generation is so used to having an easy way out of things nowadays. Pull the escape hatch and you're out of whatever it is that you're too lazy to work on. Well, there's no Plan B for this couple. I'm happy to say I'm in this for the long haul. Staying committed - to anything really - builds character and morale ground, something that seems to be going extinct nowadays. How sad, really. Does everyone just forget why they married their better half? I sure haven't.

I married her because I love her. Notice how I used the present tense of the word love?

Five years. That's something to celebrate! Not with measly old wood though. And I just don't want to hear anyone using - you know - that 'd' word on our special day. :)