58 years

Last night I had the pleasure of celebrating my Inlaws 58 years of marriage.  58 years!  In true Melang style, five people turned into ten, luckily we have the planners in our family so there was water, wine, cheese, fruit and crackers.  Thinking about them and knowing them for the over 25 years I've been married, I've noticed a few things:

Marriage is a give and take, just like raising a family.  You pick your battles, and your spouse realizes that when you do pick a battle it usually is something pretty important to you, so they take a second look at it.  And you do the same with the things that are important to them.

A long and happy marriage is a long chain of memories.  It was fun listening to the different memories, watching how they would look at each other for some of them, the important ones.  I was glad I had the pleasure of being there for some of them and see my own marriage as that - a long chain of memories that bind us together.

Marriage is a surrender of self to the both of you.  The longer you stay married the more you become one, that the joining ceremony is only that just a ceremony.  It takes a life time to learn how to live together, and heck, maybe we never fully learn it.

Marriage requires laughter, because like life once you lighten up and learn how to laugh things just get so much easier.  Like the battles, the laughter, sometimes at ones self teaches you that many things pass, the laughter and the memories are what we remember the most.

There is no regret in marriage, because everything that's happened along the lifetime happens for a reason.  A regret you may have is a memory built in someone else's life.

Marriage requires saying you are sorry, and meaning it.  It also requires forgiving, and letting it go.  Easy words to write but some of the hardest things to do.

I am lucky that not only do I get to celebrate 58 years with two very special people, but I feel part of a family that is built upon.  My better half and I have been practicing these traits the better part of 25 years and like his parents hopefully we've got many, many more.