Love is a many splendored thing, love lifts us up where we belong.

Today is Mum and Dad's 26^th wedding anniversary. 26 years ago today they declared their love in front of all their family and friends. They said the sacred vows: 

"I take you, to be my husband. I promise to be true to you in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health. I will love you and honor you all the days of my life." 

Auntie Iris read from 1 Corinthians 13, for those who don't know it :

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

The way I understand this reading is : 

You need love to function, you can have all the material and spiritual things in the world, but if you don't have someone to love you can't appreciate anything else to its full value. Without love…one is nothing, and one gains nothing. 

Love bares no grudge. When you love, you do not give up, you do not keep a tally on who started the argument and who said what, you believe in your special someone. Love always trusts, and is always truthful.

Love never ends, love never leaves us. When we are children we don't understand the true meaning of love. It is with age that we start to comprehend what Love really is. I think the part about the mirror means that we won't know true love until we see God face to face but I'm not sure. 

However great your hope and faith is, Love will always trump everything.

That is just my taking on 1 Corinthians 13 it may not be accurate but that is how I understand it. I would just like to state that I am not trying to convert anyone, or anything especially as I am not sure how I feel about God. (That may be another post who knows!)

When Mum and Dad made these promises to one another I know that they meant them. Of course we bare grudges, and tell white lies (take my shoes for example!!) and we do it to shield the other from pain. But at the end of they day, after 26 years of trials and tribulations they are still together and they still love each other, and they live by the words of the Corinthians.

When you say  « in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health » you obviously mean it, otherwise you wouldn't be getting married. But you don't think that the sickness part will come so quickly, you hope that it will be when you are 80 and you can no longer sit on your twin rocking chairs on the porch and shout and the kids running past your house having fun.

In our house it didn't happen like that, as you all know. Our sickness came when Dad was 44, BJ and Alex still babies (well in my mind anyway) and all our lives got flipped, turned upside (sorry for the Fresh Prince quote, but it seemed fitting :-S).

I comfort myself by telling myself that Mum and Dad had 22 wonderful years before things changed. They didn't do everything that they planned to do, but they did some of those things. They went on trips together, they had us, they bought Plancey, they did so many things, but there is always more to do, another place to visit, another house to renovate... Through it all, they make the most of everything. 

Mum is such an amazing woman. She has given up so much for Dad and for us. 

She is my shoulder to cry on, my arm to lean on, my pretty Yoda, my idol. Mummy is my everything. 

Mum is Dad's everything, she is his wife, the mother of his children, his best friend, and now his nurse. 

Mum could have left, she has had plenty of opportunities to do so, but she hasn't. She has stayed by Dad's side, through it all. Other people have left, not supported us, and critisized us. Leaving Mum to pick up the pieces. Even through the tough times Mum has stayed, because she loves us all, and because when she said those vows she really meant them.

When I grow big I want to be just like my Mummy, just as strong as she is, as loving, as beautiful, as amazing, as selfless, as giving and as dedicated as she is...

I love her, and thank her for staying by dad's side, through all the doctors appointments, the hospital visits, the good times and the bad, and especially for staying now. If she had left, things would be very very different. I honestly don't think that Dad would still be with us.
I believe that it is thanks to Mum and thanks to him being home, that he finds the strength to fight, and to wake up every morning.

So Thank You Mummy, and Thank You Daddy for finding Mummy and for marrying her.

« A person who truly loves you will never let you go, whatever the situation is.»

XOXO