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A Time for Love February is the month for love, thanks to St. Valentine, the 3rd century priest who ran afoul of the Emperor Claudius for performing Christian marriages. We enjoy commemorating this patron of romance via the traditional Valentine’s Day rituals of handing out red and pink cards and eating little pastel candy hearts that say ‘Be Mine’ and ‘U R the 1.’ But in our household the month takes on an extra significance, since my husband and I were married in February. On the 10th of this month, Dan and I will mark 20 years of wedded bliss. “A fifth of a century together,” my hubby laughed when we talked about what to do for our 20th anniversary. “Who would have believed it?” Of course, around our house we rarely use the word ‘anniversary’ to refer to our special date. Years ago when my now 16 year-old son Roman was barely in school, he coined a new term for our day that has stuck ever since. “Why is there a circle around February 10th?” he asked those many years ago, pointing to the calendar on the wall. “That’s the day your dad and I got married,” I explained. “Every year we celebrate it by doing something special together.” “We should make a cake,” he calmly noted. “It’s our family birthday.”
So, beginning the year he made that observation, and from that year on, we’ve celebrated our family birthday every February 10th. Dan and I go out to dinner sans children but then come home for a shared party with cake and decorations and the gift of a game or movie the family can enjoy together. We pull out our wedding album and look at the pictures together with the kids, who laugh at our hairstyles and clothes and how young we both looked back in 1990. They ask lots of questions about the ceremony and the food and the guests who came to celebrate with us, and we remember just how special a wedding — and a family — is. During one of those family birthday parties years ago, my daughter Abby — who was 7 at the time — asked me how I knew her dad was the man I wanted to marry. “There’s was something special about him and I sensed it from the moment I met him,” I told her. “Of all the men in the world, I knew he was the one I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.” She sat silent for a minute, deep in thought. Then she said, “How did you get all those men together so you could pick out Daddy?” In her young mind, she was trying to visualize the logistics of a sprawling field full of eligible bachelors, lined up in rows so young lasses could size them up and select the proper groom. No doubt a daunting task for any bride-to-be! “It doesn’t work that way,” I laughed. “When it’s true love, you don’t have to go looking for it — God brings the right one to you.” So Happy 20th Birthday, my beloved (and crazy) family! May we continue to grow in God’s love and grace, and be together in this world and the next — and may there always be plenty of cake to go around. |
Our family birthday — I chuckled when he said it, but then the more I thought about it, the more I realized how accurate that really was. What was begun that day was not simply the coming together of a man and woman in love or the combining of two individuals as a new legal partnership, but the start of a new entity with a life all its own. It was a fresh vine sprouting, green and fragile but ready to grow and send out shoots. The fledgling enterprise was rich with potential to produce interwoven relationships that would echo through eternity, blessed by God and full of his promise. And, yes, even the children — who would not arrive in person for some years to come — were there with us at the altar, beloved with great anticipation in our dreams as we exchanged our ‘I do’s’ before God and our gathered family and friends. Roman was right: it truly was a day of birth.