Sixty Years

We spent this weekend at T's parents' home, with his parents, grandparents, brother and brother's wife. We were celebrating the grandparent's 60th wedding anniversary and spent the weekend eating and playing games. It was lovely to spend so much time together catching up and just relaxing, it really did feel like a holiday.

Sixty years is an amazing length of time. It reminded me a bit of one of my favourite trashy books, P.S. I Love You (by Cecilia Ahern) - which I was going to quote from but I can't find the book now. No idea where that's gone. Anyway, the story is about a woman who is in her twenties whose husband dies when they are still young and she says something like "How arrogant we were to see growing old as something to fear, to be avoided. Now I see it would have been an achievement."

Sixty years married is such an achievement. I think there's a good lesson here - often we worry about time moving to quickly, and about getting old but if we can see that as a positive thing we'll be much happier. Sometimes we go the other way too - wishing away the day, waiting for something else, some exciting event or milestone to arrive. That was one thing I learned while we were engaged. We were constantly looking forward to the wedding day and married life but I realised pretty quickly that if we wished away this time we wouldn't be fully appreciating it.

Philippians 4:12-13 says "I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength."

Something to aspire to?