New Year’s Eve 2010
“When we get to the bottom of this, we’re going to find God there,” I wrote in a letter to Mary Ann many years ago. There could be no explanation for the overwhelmingly insistent and irresistible love we shared but that God had planted it in our hearts.
Tonight, at midnight, we begin the fifth decade of a love affair. Not as an aging couple settled into their lives and comfortable in their places, but with all the passion, hope and excitement of the two teenagers who took each other’s hand and set out together on an unending adventure forty-one years ago.
New Year’s Eve, 1970. How far away 2010 would have seemed to us then!
We were still in our teens, Mary Ann and I, and we could not have imagined this time or place. We could not have imagined a country or world configured as they are today, and we could not have imagined ourselves as we now are.
Prometheus, the ancient story tells us, blinded mankind to the future, and thereby created the wonderful adventure that is life. In our beginning, the future stretched out before us with all the impenetrable depth of the sky, and we could see nothing beyond the hopes reflected in young lovers’ eyes.
Together, for good and bad, better and worse, we set out to meet whatever waited around each corner and to discover what lay beyond every hill. We broke the seals of life together and discovered the secrets and joys inside, accepting the uncommon risks of a life worth living.
We offered no complaint when we stumbled, fell or failed. We lifted each other up, and continued together on our way.
Tomorrow we begin a new year, a new chapter in this unending love story. New discoveries await over hills not yet crested, and sweet mysteries will be revealed every night in her arms.
I cannot see the future, but one thing I know for certain. When we get to the bottom of all this, we’re going to find God there.
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I envy what you have together. Inspiring posts.