To all my friends (the ones I know and the ones I haven’t met yet),
Today my wife and I celebrate 25 years of married life together. It is hard for me to believe that it has been 25 years since our wedding day! The time seems to have flown by. And there have been so many wonderful times that we have shared together! I am so thankful!
I don’t want to give the impression that the last 25 years have been one big party. Or that those years have been problem-free, because they haven’t. But they have been good!
When I reflect on marriage, I often find myself coming back to Ephesians 5. Verse 25 says, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” God calls us men to love our wives in a selfless, sacrificial way. It is hard and it is something that we don’t want to do. The world encourages us to feed our own self-centred desires. But, looking back, I thank God for all the times when he put me in situations where I was forced to make a choice between doing what I wanted or sacrificing my desires and wants for the sake of my wife. I never enjoyed those times, and I still don’t, but they are the best thing for me. Those times have helped me to grow as a person and grow in my faith towards God and grow in love towards my wife. And that has been a great blessing to me.
Love is not an emotion or a feeling. Jesus defined love this way, “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13) The world is less than half right
when it tells us that love is how you feel inside about someone else. The world is warped when it tells us that sex is love. And the world is sick when it says that love means “You complete me!” Love is selfless sacrifice without any expectations of something coming back in return.
I have also been blessed because I have been loved in that way. One of the greatest gifts my wife has given me (besides our seven beautiful, gifted, rambunctious and creative children) has been her life-changing decision to love me as the Bible describes. Ephesians 5:22-24 says, “Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.” For some of you that passage of Scripture is offensive. I myself do not fully understand it. But my wife decided to love me in that way. It was not natural for her. But that was her selfless, sacrificial love to me. She did it on her own, with no prompting other than that of the Holy Spirit. And it was a major turning point in our marriage.
So thank you for your love, Susan! You are such a precious gift from God to me! Thank you Father for bringing this wonderful woman into my life! Thank you Jesus for bringing us together as husband and wife! Thank you Holy Spirit for the changes you have brought about in my life so I could love Susan as I should! Help me to love her more!
Lots of love,
James
Farewell to Shadowlands 