“Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.” 1 Corinthians 13: 4-7 NLT

We recently celebrated our 22nd anniversary, and I remember well on the day of our wedding when these words were read out loud to us while standing at the altar with all of our friends and family gathered around. This passage is often read at weddings. After all who wouldn’t want to hear a bit of inspiration on their wedding day from a passage known as “The Love Chapter”. Eric and I knew these words were important at the time, and we knew that if we wanted a good marriage, one that would last a lifetime, we had better pay attention to these wise words. But of course, there was no way that we could’ve known on that day just how precious this passage would become to us. We thought we knew what these words meant then, but after 22 years of marriage and 16 years of raising a child with special needs, it’s pretty clear that we had only scratched the surface. 

Eric and I were college sweethearts, and when we married we were only in our early 20’s. Just kids really. Back then we had big hopes and dreams and even bigger plans. Plans that we just knew we could make happen, if only we worked hard enough to achieve them. Over the next decade we did achieve many of those dreams, and our plans were coming together. Our careers took off and we began to grow our family, having 2 beautiful children. First a son and then a daughter. And our love grew deeper and more meaningful with each passing year. 

Love is Never Proud, Unforgiving, or Impatient

Of course, there had been adjustments during those newlywed years, as there always are. These were the years when we each found that we had to work on that part in “The Love Chapter” about not being proud or demanding our own way, and about keeping no record of wrongs but rather being quick to forgive. And there were even more adjustments when the kids came along and sleepless nights didn’t exactly help us with the part about not being irritable and instead being patient and kind. But overall, we sailed through those adjustments and grew stronger in our marriage as time went on. 

Love Never Gives Up

Then just before her 4^th birthday, after a yearlong process, our daughter was diagnosed with Autism, and we began a new journey. A new norm. If you have a child with special needs, you know the story. So much of our life suddenly became margin-less. Our life became filled with appointments to doctors and therapies, biomedical interventions, researching the latest treatments and programs late into the night, and balancing time for our jobs, our other child, and our marriage. In the midst of living that life without margin, we both began to grieve. And marriage in the midst of all of that grief, with little to no margin to even process what we were feeling, became really hard. Yet we held on and refused to give up. We continued to support one another and to lean on each other for what felt like sheer survival at the time.  

Love Never Loses Faith or Hope

In the years since, we have been through many ups and downs in life. There have been lots of amazing moments of celebration, but there have been many moments of heartbreak and loss as well. Both of us have felt the heavy loss of dreams and the stinging disappointment of plans diverted. For me it meant the loss of a career in physical therapy that I loved; when I could no longer continue juggling my work schedule and the needs of my daughter and our family. For my husband it meant having to walk away from coaching football for several years, due to our daughter’s high level of needs. This was not only a passion of his after having played through college, but it was a ministry that impacted the lives of young men, and which we both felt our family would be a part of as our children grew up. We used to say that we didn’t need to become missionaries and go on the mission field, because our mission was on the field. The football field. But that would only be a part of our family’s story. In the midst of loss and disappointments like these, and others over the years, our marriage was often tested. It would have been easy to lose our faith and hope. In fact, there was a time that I struggled with my faith, not in my husband’s love, but in God’s goodness and love and my hope for our family’s future (see Journeying Through the Grief Cycle). I thank God that He has seen me, and us as a couple, through those years; and that He has strengthened our faith and hope both in Him and in each other through the process. It was because of His faithfulness and His love which never failed, that we were able to go on and to continue in our faith and hope. 

Love Endures Every Circumstance

Marriage in the midst of hard circumstances has not been easy that’s true, but it has truly made us stronger, more resilient, and more determined to love each other well. It has meant giving up our own wants and needs for the sake of our spouse, even when we are both equally tired, weary, or simply not our best. Getting up in the morning and greeting your spouse with a kind disposition, when you are completely tanked from being up all night with your child, may not be the natural response, but it’s the necessary one for building a healthy marriage. Marriage in the midst of hard circumstances has also meant that we have had to be more intentional about our relationship by doing things like planning and prioritizing our date nights. It may take allot to secure respite workers at times but has been well worth it, because sometimes those date nights have been the only uninterrupted moment in our entire week to catch up with one another and to connect at the head and heart level. Yes, raising a child with special needs while trying to maintain a thriving marriage is most definitely a challenge, but we can honestly say that this journey has enriched our marriage. It’s like a diamond which was made through the application of pressure over time on a simple piece of coal. Just as the diamond becomes a precious stone through that process, so too has our marriage become precious to us through this process.