2002-06-28-8:14 p.m.

My parents are having their fiftieth anniversary reception this weekend.

How many people actually have their fiftieth wedding anniversary? I know of very few. The ones I know are people I've gone to church with. I wonder if that says anything.

The people who live to the right of us are both in their second marriages. The people on the left are still together in their original marriage. They could make it to fifty years. The people one house down from them are a remarried family. In the next house to them the wife is on her third marriage. It'd be hard to make it to fifty if you're on your second or third marriage, I would think. It could happen, though.

I'm glad my parents are still together. I think it must be one of those things that you don't really notice unless it's gone. Like if you suddenly choke on something you realize how much you need air. Or when your kids leave to go to camp you notice how much you miss them playing the piano or kissing you good night. I think, if my parents suddenly weren't together anymore it would have some kind of weird effect on me that I could never foresee. I don't know what to compare it to.

I know I never had to be shipped back and forth from my mom to my dad. My mom has never said anything mean about my dad and my dad has never said anything mean about my mom. They fight, yeah, but they fight honest and they don't try to hide it or anything. They just fight and get over it and go on to the next thing. I think that when they got married it was like they considered they were blood relatives from then on and even if they fought they were still part of the same family, like brother and sister or father and son and they were stuck with each other and they might as well make the best of it. It's sort of like that, I think, but different - better - because they did get to choose each other.

I think that when we celebrate this weekend it won't really be a celebration of "wow, they stuck it out for fifty years" because *not* sticking it out was never really an option. I think it will be a celebration of our family, of what God did in their lives all those fifty years, how he blessed them and blessed us kids, a celebration of how we've all always *been* a family. I think it will be a celebration of the "one flesh" they became when they got married and of the way they accepted that without question for fifty years.

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