How We’ve Kept the Love Alive After Three Decades of Marriage

We have walked out our vows in every way imaginable. Meaning we have experienced the better and the worse. We have enjoyed good health and endured through sickness. Not just colds and flu, but real-life conditions that challenge your resolve in ways many couldn’t bear. We have experienced times of plenty (richer) and indeed poorer days – the kind where you have a bag of nickels and you gotta figure it out. But through it all, we have committed to “until death do us part.” Has it been easy? Heck no! Worth it? Absolutely!

Coming into marriage, we were young, and all we knew was we wanted to be together forever. We didn’t realize that we would change and evolve and wouldn’t even like one another some days. We didn’t know that we would have to extend grace to one another and give one another space to, as our forever First Lady put it, become. But, we did it — with God’s help and by HIS design. 

We came to understand that marriage is a daily decision to walk out our vows and honor the commitment we made before God, to one another, and to ourselves. We learned that true love gives our partner wings and doesn’t try to confine them to a cage shaped in comfort. And ultimately, we learned to see one another through God’s eyes lest we focus on one another’s flaws and grow frustrated with each other’s humanity.

Is our love story one of perfection? Nope. But it’s ours. And I think it’s safe to say we’ve got the real deal because after three decades, I regularly awake to him smiling at me. He calls me “beautiful” all day, every day, and he’ll spontaneously whisper the lyrics to our song – “Can I just see you every morning when I open my eyes”- and he really means it.

So shout out to the ones who aren’t trying to be #goals, but instead are focused on loving one another #TillTheWheelsFallOff. Because at the end of the day, we don’t have the secret recipe for a happy marriage; we have simply found the rhythm and blues that keep US moving and grooving together. We are, have always been, and forever will be #BlackLove.