She was a spunky french girl from upstate New York. He was a polish boy who had become a pilot in the United States Navy. They met on a blind date at a Halloween ball. Pop said he drove up to her house and when she opened the door, he knew she was the one.
I always thought love at first sight was something you only read about in fairy tales.
Not for my Grandparents
They met in October and were married in April. In nine years they had seven children who would later give them 18 grandchildren and 9 great grandchildren.
And last week was their 60th wedding anniversary.
Having grown up in a culture where half of marriages end in divorce, stories like my grandparents are becoming more and more rare. Marriage is hard, difficult work at times. It might sound like my Grandparents had a fairy-tale love story, but that isn’t further from the truth. My Grandparents had struggles. Big struggles.
They were fallen human beings after all, but they were two fallen human beings who decided to walk hand in hand through life and not leave each others side through the good times and bad, in sickness and health, for richer and poorer.
For 60 years. 720 months. 21,900 days.
I don’t know about you, but I crave a love like my grandparents.
A love that is genuine and pure, untouched by social media and the expectations of a generation that doesn’t truly understand what love is.
It is not a walk in the park. It is not a feeling.
It’s commitment. Its honoring ones vows even when you don’t feel like it. It’s clinging onto Gods mercy amid the hard times. It’s choosing that person even when they test your patience and push your buttons and break your heart.
It’s my Grandparents, who have held on to each other through a roller coaster of the highest highs and lowest lows. My grandparents who still pray together every morning, go on camping trips every Summer and who when asked as a joke when they last held hands chuckled with stars in their eyes and said “this morning.”
I want a love like that. A pure, old-fashioned love where quality time is spent together without technology, where love-letters are treasured over likes and shares, where you don’t walk away when things are hard, and where loyalty and honor are valued above comfort and emotion.
And the amazing thing is, it’s possible.
By Gods grace and preservation, it’s possible.
I know because I’ve seen it.
Thank you Gram and Pop, for showing me what it is to be unequivocally devoted to another person. And thank you God, for holding Gram and Pop together for 60 years.
May their next few years be the sweetest yet.
” Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand’ring bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me prov’d,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d. “
–William Shakespeare
Thank you to our wonderful granddaughter. We are so blessed to have such amazing grandkids like you. I would like to express myself the way you do!! Also your mom wrote that lovely poem your family are so talented and it shows how home schooling is the way to go! We love you so much and I believe you and Eli will have a marriage that is blessed by God and you will look back when you have your 60th saying thank you just as we have….thank you Jesus
Thank you so much Gram and Pop! I love you guys.