I MARRIED A WHAT?

Twenty-five years ago today, my wife and I stood in a small church we had never set foot in before and held hands while a good friend strummed his guitar and sang John Lennon’s “God Bless Our Love.” He certainly has.

Today is our 25th wedding anniversary. Not too bad, I suppose, considering the average duration of a marriage in the United States these days is 8 years. It’s even more amazing when you take into account that my poor wife probably wakes up each and every morning with something akin to this running through her head…

And yet, despite the thing she married, my wife’s love hasn’t wavered once. You know, maybe our dissimilarities have actually helped us stay together all these years. It’s like Pope Francis said this last Sunday when he presided over the wedding of 20 couples in St. Peter’s Basilica. “This is what marriage is all about,” the Holy Father commented, “man and woman walking together, wherein the husband helps his wife to become ever more a woman, and wherein the woman has the task of helping her husband to become ever more a man. Here we see the reciprocity of differences.”

Well, “Vive la différence!” we like say around these parts (after which we smack ourselves upside the head for speaking French). And may God grant long life and health to the woman who, 25 years ago, married a monster and made a man out of him. Words can’t express the love.