It was early in 1970.
Just turned 21, I was nervous and excited as I strolled along Coolangatta Beach.
A trainee engineer, assigned to Murwillumbah by the Department of Main Roads, I had caught the bus to go up to Coolangatta on my day off.
In my pocket I carried about with me a letter written by Eileen McDowell. I had written to her, along with many others from my Youth Fellowship back home in Cronulla. But to Eileen I had written, tentatively sounding her out, hoping she might respond with more interest than others.
She had written back. But with more interest than others??
She wrote, “Dear Ken”… but everyone wrote “Dear” back then (now sadly it’s only “Hi”). But maybe her “Dear” meant more than “Hi”… Did it? Didn’t it? (It didn’t 😔).
Nonetheless, that tortuous beginning blossomed into the most wonderful relationship.
A little over two years later we were married. That was 50 years ago today: 6th May, 1972. It still all seems like only yesterday.
We went for our honeymoon to Coolangatta.
One year later, we celebrated our 1st wedding anniversary, in Coolangatta – not in Qld, but the historic village near Nowra, NSW, established 200 years ago (after which its more famous namesake in Qld was named 60 years later).
Later again, on furlough as a missionary from Kenya, Eileen’s parents kindly took us and other members of their family on a two week holiday to Coolangatta (Qld) – a gesture they repeated more than once in subsequent years.
And, over the last 10 years, we have frequently holidayed there from Brisbane.
So it seems fitting that, just last month we moved to Coolangatta.
And now, here we are, on our 50th wedding anniversary, living where it all began.
Fifty years!
What has the Lord taught us?
Love
“What is love?”
That’s where I always begin asking young couples in pre-marital counselling.
It is a surprisingly difficult question to answer.
When Charles and Diana became engaged, an interviewer asked if they were in love. Diana said, “Of course”; but Charles added, “Whatever ‘in love’ means.”
Though, at the time, Diana giggled at his quip, yet years later, in the aftermath of a wrecked marriage, she said Charles’s response even back then had “traumatized” her.
“Whatever ‘in love’ means.”
“What is love?”
Did we know back then? Did we really love each other?
Were we “in love”?
Absolutely!
Yet how much more we love each other now.
We still have our ups and downs; we will still face differences we need to work through.
But, how much more we know what love is.
How is this?
Know
When you marry there is so much you don’t know about the other.
Marriage is a wonderful adventure, learning new things about the other every day.
I still have a lot to learn about Eileen: the longer we are married, the more I want to understand how she thinks. I didn’t think about that 50 years ago; but I do now – and every day I realise afresh I will never be able to know how to think exactly the way she does.
Does that concern me? Not really.
Of course I want to understand and empathise with her concerns. But thinking differently is all part of the exciting adventure which is living with the one you marry.
We are still learning to be patient, to respect and appreciate the other’s perspective.
Vive la difference!
But we do know each other far more, vastly far more, than when we married.
We know each other better, more deeply, more intimately than ever before. We have no secrets.
And we love each other better, more deeply, more intimately than ever before.
This is why the Bible uses “knowing” as a synonym for “loving”. You can’t love someone – not intimately and deeply – that you don’t know.
True, we are to “love” even those we know nothing about, even our enemies. But that is not an intimate and deep love; love of enemies is a matter of doing: “doing good” as Jesus explained in Luke 6:27,33,35 etc.
That is qualitatively vastly different from the love of an intimate, personal relationship.
It is qualitatively vastly different from the love the Father bestows upon those whom He “fore-knew”; and whom, because He knew (i.e. loved) them, He chose them “to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.” (Rom 8:29).
God took the initiative back then – yes, even “while we were still sinners” (Rom 5:8).
And now, “we love Him because He first loved us.” ( 1 Joh 4:19)
We love God, we love Christ because we “know Him” (Phil 3:10). Indeed eternal life is to “know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” (Joh 17:3)
Intimate, personal “love” cannot exist without “knowing”.
Our love for each other is so much more now, now that we know each other so much better.
Sin
But we also know so much more about each other’s failures, each other’s sins.
That is part of having no secrets from each other.
We are two sinners. We can both be strong headed when we want to (even when we don’t want to), and we’ve had our fair share of arguments.
I cannot believe how little I understood about the sin in my heart before I was married – or even in the early years of our marriage.
But the longer I am married the more I become painfully aware how my sinful actions and reactions inflict pain upon my wife.
Sin and selfishness.
Marriage quickly uncovers the native selfishness of our hearts. Nothing makes us so unattractive to the other as selfishness.
Grace
But “where sin abounded, grace abounded much more” (Rom 5:20).
We see such grace in each other, when the other is able to forgive – and we love the other even more. For “to whom much is forgiven, the same loves much.” (Luke 7:47). My wife has forgiven me often.
Forgiveness means a willingness to bear with and overlook the other’s occasional failures or even recurring besetting foibles. “Love covers a multitude of sins.” (Prov 10:12, 1 Pet 4:8)
“The discretion of a man makes him slow to anger, and his glory is to overlook an offence.” (Prov 19:11)
But though the other may overlook such minor offences, it is better that you see the offence and say “sorry”.
But forgiveness does not mean ignoring serious sin in the other where there is no repentance, confession and reformation – sin so serious that it severely damages, even destroys, the relationship.
But it does mean, freely and readily forgiving even serious sin in the other where they are genuinely sorry and confess and show it. (Luke 17:3-4)
And, once forgiven, it means not holding on to resentment, and not bringing up the past again. That is grace.
This is how God forgives: God forgives and forgets (Psalm 103:12, Micah 7:19).
We love Him who has forgiven us so much, so much more.
That is the miracle of grace we too are to exercise in marriage – and, indeed in all our relationships (cf Eph 5:2 and Eph 5:25).
Christian marriage is one of the greatest miracles, one of the greatest testimonies to the grace of God.
Imagine it! Two sinners, learning to forgive each other, learning to live in harmony with each other – not just once or twice (as may be the case among Christian friends) but day after day, over and again, year after year, for years and years.
Could there be a greater miracle of grace? Could there be a more powerful testimony to what our great God is able to do?
Growth
How much our love has grown over 50 years of ups and downs.
Two years after we were married Eileen was expecting our first child, and I was studying for the ministry.
Because of my interest in the topic of the Free Offer of the Gospel, and because our denomination was considering whether or not to pursue closer ties with a couple of denominations that seemed to deny the Free Offer I was assigned the topic as my thesis.
I dived in with enthusiasm. And when, a year later, my denomination published my thesis as a book: Christ Freely Offered, the fairly prosaic dedication read:
To Eileen
who gave birth
while I wrote a book
Perhaps nothing sums up how our love has grown and matured than when, two years ago (46 years after it was first published) Christ Freely Offered was republished, the dedication then read:
To Eileen
the love of my life and my companion
who has walked with me
and worked with me
and kept me warm
these 50 years
Love
“We love Him because He first loved us.” (1 John 4:19)
We love more as we ourselves are loved.
Just as nothing makes you so unattractive to the other as selfishness, so nothing makes you more attractive to the other than that you genuinely love them – with real, agape love.
As beautiful as Eileen is, there is nothing that makes her more attractive to me than that she loves me – she actually loves me!
And, as beautiful as I am not, there is nothing that makes me more attractive to her than that I love her.
What greater earthly blessing is there than to have a spouse who is always there, and who will love you even through your sins and failures, and with all your imperfections.
Love Story
Back in 1970 the cult classic movie Love Story came out. “Love means never having to say you’re sorry” was the tag line.
In the movie the character played by Ryan O’Neal apologizes to his love interest (played by Ali MacGraw) for his anger; she interrupts him with the stupid tag line above.
Far better was the slapstick comedy What’s Up, Doc? that came out two years later (the year we were married), also starring Ryan O’Neal.
In that film’s final scene, when his love interest bats her eyelashes and says “Love means never having to say you’re sorry,” O’Neal’s character responds in a flat deadpan voice, “That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard.” For once Hollywood got it right!
(Even MacGraw has said that she always hated the line and considered it ridiculous.)
Ours is not a Hollywood love story.
But it is our love story:
. Love
. Know
. Sin
. Grace
. Grow
. Love
Let each one of you so love his own wife as himself,
and let the wife see that she respects her husband.
(Eph 5:33)