Bending Again Toward Partnership

The LORD blessed the latter part of Job’s life more than the former part.

—Job 42:12

There is something sweet and shining about a young bride and groom, and their first home and dishes and set of towels. But there is a different beauty and force when two people who have been down that road far enough to hit some bumps decide to bend themselves once again toward partnership. Where there was naïveté, here there is sobriety. Where a young bride leaves her family, an older bride brings hers with her. Where a young groom hopes all goes well, an older groom knows what to do when it doesn’t.

When our friends Jim and Jodi got married, that night felt sacred and beautiful and imbued with something heavy. It was a hard-won celebration, a willingness to fall again, to teach and be taught, to enter through a door both had believed was closed forever. We danced and ate cake and toasted them with champagne and told crazy old sailing stories. We laughed and let the kids stay up way too late and watched the bobbing mast lights on the sailboats in the harbor, hypnotized by the beauty and hope of that night.