A Marriage Made of Mornings

A long marriage is held up by more faithfulness than the two people in it

Fifty years of marriage is mostly made of mornings.

The anniversary photos show the cake and the grandkids and the renewed vows. They don't show the stretch in year nineteen when the two of them barely spoke, or the hospital chairs, or the money fight that ran for most of a decade, or the morning one of them sat in the car in the driveway and seriously considered not coming back inside. Most couples who make it this far know something the cards leave out. There were seasons they held on by a thread, and the thread wasn't always theirs.

If you're looking at a long marriage and wondering why yours feels so fragile, or looking back on your own and wincing at what you see, this is for you.

The Swing at 6:50

They're on the porch swing, the one he hung with four ropes the summer they bought the house. She has her coffee in both hands. He has his on the rail, where it'll go cold because he always forgets it. The morning light is just reaching the top step. Nobody's said anything for a while, and nobody needs to. A truck goes by. A bird lands on the feeder and leaves. Tomorrow will look almost exactly like this, and that's the point.

Coffee at Four in the Morning

For a long stretch of our marriage I was the first one up in the house, eyes open around four in the morning. I'd move around the house, and every so often I'd listen at the bedroom door, because I know my wife loves a good cup of coffee and she likes the way I make it. When I heard her breathing change and knew she was awake, I'd head to the kitchen and bring her a cup.

I told that story from the pulpit once, and I was careful to say I wasn't trying to make myself look good. I was trying to show what love does. Turn it into a rule, if you want a good marriage, make your wife coffee, and it becomes a box I'm checking because I'm supposed to. The coffee is identical either way. What's different is whether my heart is in it. A box gets checked because somebody is watching. Love gets up at four and listens at the door because it wants to, and nobody has to tell it twice.

That's the difference between two covenants, and it matters for every couple on every porch.

"Those Who Love Him and Keep His Commandments"

Here's the verse that can make a long marriage, or a long walk with God, feel like a grade you're always one bad year from failing:

Therefore know that the Lord your God, He is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations with those who love Him and keep His commandments. (Deuteronomy 7:9)

That was Sinai. God's faithfulness is real in it, and it's stated beautifully, but the covenant had two parties, and Israel's half kept breaking. If our standing with God depended on how well we kept our half, every one of us would be the spouse in the driveway.

Then listen to what God says through Hosea, to the same unfaithful people:

I will betroth you to Me forever; Yes, I will betroth you to Me In righteousness and justice, In lovingkindness and mercy; I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness, And you shall know the Lord. (Hosea 2:19-20)

Count the I wills. God makes every promise in that passage, and He makes them to a people who had been running after other lovers. A chapter later He tells Hosea to go and love his wayward wife again, just like the love of the Lord for the children of Israel (Hosea 3:1). The picture of covenant God chose was a marriage held together by one partner's faithfulness when the other one failed.

That's the covenant you live in through Jesus. He kept every part of it, and it rests on Him. God didn't wait for Israel to become a faithful bride before He spoke those vows, and He didn't wait for you either. Your mornings with God, and your mornings on the porch, sit on top of a faithfulness that was never yours to hold up alone.

New Every Morning

Lamentations was written in the ruins of Jerusalem, and right in the middle of it sit some of the most hopeful lines in the Bible:

Through the Lord's mercies we are not consumed, Because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; Great is Your faithfulness. (Lamentations 3:22-23)

New every morning. Not once a year at the anniversary dinner. Every ordinary morning, the coffee and the bird feeder and the truck going by, His mercy shows up again before anyone on the swing has done a thing to deserve it.

That's what makes a fifty-year marriage such a clear window into the gospel. We love Him because He first loved us (1 John 4:19). The love on that porch is a response to a love that came first and kept coming.

Some mornings you'll sit next to the person you married and feel more distance than closeness, and you won't know how to close it. Bring them a cup of coffee anyway, and let the mercy that's new this morning cover you both.

She reaches over without looking and moves his cup off the rail and into his hand, and the swing keeps rocking on its four ropes in the early light.