Toast

On Saturday, August 11, we held our 25th Anniversary party. It was a delightful time. Most of our extended family was able to join us, and several extended-extended family members came as well. We also had significant representation from our college friends, church friends, and buddies -- and that was really great. I think everyone who came had someone to chat with, when they couldn't be chatting with us.

I wrote a toast for the event, and delivered it at around 7:00. The remainder of this entry will be that toast. If you know us, and you were not at the party, feel free to read it. It was heartfelt.

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We’ve been looking forward to this landmark, this 25^th anniversary year, for a long time. And we’ve been looking forward to this party, this celebration, with all of you, since – well, since Sherry came up with the idea – but certainly for the past several months. I’m glad you could be with us.

You all know me pretty well, so you are probably not surprised that one of the things I wanted to do at this event was to give a toast. You see, I love to speak, but when we first got married, I didn’t realize that the wedding traditions included toasts. You see, we were pretty young. Considering Adam is 23 now, I guess I must have been what - 11 years old? Certainly Sherry couldn’t have been more than eight!

Anyway, here I had had a captive audience, a perfect opportunity to give a speech, and I let it pass without saying anything more than an “I Do.” In the end, of course, that was all I needed to say. And without a doubt, I’m exceptionally glad I said it! But if you’ll indulge me, I’d like to say a little more this time.

When I started thinking about what to put in this toast, I realized I had three topics I wanted to cover: Love, Marriage, and Sherry. For me, of course, they are all related. And for this particular toast, I think they’re all important.

First, let’s talk about Love. At a lot of weddings, here’s what you often hear about Love (from 1 Corinthians 13)

4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

It’s hard to improve on that. As I was thinking about it, especially in the context of marriage, my marriage, our marriage, I thought about another way to look at Love. Love is patient and kind, for sure, but it’s also Alive. It has characteristics that make it clear that Love, real Love, is living. All those aspects of love in the verses I read make Love sound alove, but it’s easy to see why. First of all, it Grows. It’s almost trite to say, but it’s true, that on the day we got married, I couldn’t imagine my love being any bigger, deeper or stronger than it was that day. Yet it’s also clearly true that it has grown over time, like a living thing that grows from baby to child to adult; bigger, stronger, wiser. Love is also Alive because it reproduces. It makes new love relationships when children are born, and it causes other love relationships to form, as the people who are loved by the wife become loved by the husband, and vice versa. And, like a living thing, Love sustains and nurtures, helping people live through, or thrive in, circumstances that would be difficult or impossible without it.

Love. The Love we celebrate today has certainly done all those things for me, and for Sherry. It’s Alive.

What about Marriage? What do I want to say about that? For many of you in attendance, you know this stuff, whether you’d say it this way or not, because you’re in a good marriage. But I have an opportunity to talk to my children now, and, with any luck, they won’t interrupt me, since we’re not at the dinner table.

You’ve grown up in the environment of a good marriage, but the culture around you often trivializes marriage, makes it an after-thought, the somewhat natural progression of a romance, as if it just sort of happens. This is not the case. You’ve gotten tired of hearing us say that it requires work, so I won’t talk about that. Instead I’ll talk about ingredients that I hope you’ve seen in our marriage, and that you will be able to bring into yours, whenever they happen.

The first is Commitment and Constancy. Though they are often said in a kind of rote, mechanical, scripted way, the vows that are part of the marriage sacrament are all about commitment and constancy. Life is full of changes, highs, lows, happiness and worry. During the bad times, it’s important to know that the person you’re married to is committed to you. I know, without asking, that your mom is there to support me when I’m having a tough time. And I know that, no matter how tough a time I am having, I will be there for her when she needs me, whether we’re happy with each other or not. It’s a promise I made, a commitment, a covenant. Just as important, I am there for her, and she is there for me during the good times! People so often overlook this! I know that when I have good news, Sherry will be there to celebrate. And I know that my good news is not mine alone – I can’t hoard it selfishly – it belongs to her, too.

The second aspect of our marriage I hope you can have is Trust and Respect. This certainly includes trusting your mom to follow through on promises, and to not do things to harm me, but those are just the tip of the iceberg. I trust her to back me up, even when she doesn’t completely agree with me, and she can trust me to do the same for her. This is very big when you’re a parent. I doubt any married couple ever existed who both wanted to raise kids exactly the same way; your mom and I certainly have had different ideas from one another, but we respect each other. I trust, without any doubt at all, that the decisions she makes are with the best intentions. She respects my judgment, and I hers. We are truly partners, and we don’t ever have to worry about whether the other one respects us, because we constantly demonstrate it, and when we’re apart, we trust implicitly that the respect continues.

But of course, the final aspect I will mention is Love and Faith. I’ve already talked about it before, so let me just say this. I once heard that the greatest gift a father can give his children is to love their mother. Kids, if that’s true, it hasn’t been hard to give you that gift. I am confident that you’ve seen the love in both directions. And, obviously, being in our home all these years, you know that our Faith and our Love are inextricably linked.

Twenty-five years in this wonderful marriage, and the rest of our lives to come, it’s that constant commitment, trusting respect, and faithful love that sustain us.

And finally, I could not give this toast without talking about my wonderful wife, Sherry. After twenty-five years, it’s impossible to explain all the reasons I love her so much. Fortunately for all of you, I’ve built this toast around threes – three topics, three aspects of each – so I will talk about three things that make Sherry perfect for me.

First of all, she is different from me, but in ways that complement me. I am even-keeled; she is high and low. Without her, I could not have enjoyed life as fully as I have, because she has such high highs! And when she is in a Low Low, I know she can use my help finding her way back up. When I would just sit in an airport in Oahu for hours, waiting for our delayed plane to finally take off, she persuades me to go out and DO something, so we get to see Waikiki. Oh, and let’s never forget – she always wanted four kids, whereas I entered the marriage figuring on three. I suspect everyone here is glad she was able to “complement” me in that way! Hurray for Leah!

Secondly, though we are definitely different, Sherry is very much like me, in some ways. I can’t tell you how often we’ve marveled at how great it is that we both like Star Trek, Star Wars, Harry Potter, Babylon 5, Lord of the Rings, and Ender’s Game. And I know from many friendships with many men that I am truly blessed to have a wife who likes to – gasp – watch me – wait for it! – play video games! Folks, these are the kinds of things you will not get with eHarmony.com. There has to be divine intervention involved!

And finally, Sherry is loving, and willing to be loved. She gives of herself, she reaches out to people who others would ignore, and she still has plenty of love to give to her family, and always to me. And she’s appreciative of the ways I show her my love; the words I say, the cards I send – though they might be less frequent than the every-Monday pattern I started while we were dating – the gifts I give, the calls I make. She loves me, she shows her love to me and to others, and she makes it easy to love her in return.

She’s different, in exactly the right way. She’s similar, in exactly the right way. And I love her, exactly as I was meant to.

That passage in 1 Corinthians ends like this:

13And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

And so, my friends, my family, loved ones all, thank you again for joining us in this celebration of love. Let’s lift our glasses and toast, to Sherry, to Marriage, and to the greatest of these – To Love!


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Originally published August 13, 2007.