My wife and I are celebrated our anniversary yesterday. It’s not actually quite our anniversary yet – that’s a few days away – but we brought the celebration forward for a few reasons. Suffice to say, unless I do something catastrophically bad in the next few days, I think we’ll safely make eighteen years. I still feel its another two years until we can properly call it a long time. Twenty feels like the shortest long time in a marriage to me; we’re still not into what might be called a long time yet.

I reflected earlier this week on what makes for a successful ministry. It was prompted by the fact that this week I am hurtling towards my final Sunday in the church I have been pastoring the last twelve years. You can read that here. I am minded to think that these same measures (in some sense) apply to success in marriage too.

Before I say any more, it bears repeating that I don’t think we’ve reached the shortest long time in our marriage yet. That means I am not nearing the end of my marriage and I am not sitting here reflecting back on vast experience. In the grand scheme of things, eighteen years is nothing. I am told the average length of time for marriages that end in divorce is twelve and a half years – so we’ve managed to beat that particular statistic – but there are still many more years left for me to screw this up, so I’m not sitting on any laurels here.

But that said, I still think the two measures of church success I highlighted earlier might apply here. First, my marriage is still here. Whilst I can only point to over one decade of marriage, most marriages that end up in divorce have sunk before the eighteen year mark. Neither my wife nor I have any intention of divorcing and the fact that our marriage is still going, still standing, is significant I think. I don’t think it makes us special – lots of people get here and beyond – but as far as success goes, I am still married and have no intention of seeking out another.

Second, and I think even more importantly, both my wife and I are still walking with the Lord in our marriage. It is all well and good for us to stay together, but if in the process one or other of us had binned off Jesus, that feels like a particular problem. On the last day, our marriage isn’t going to be the determinate factor. If anything, a marriage that led to one of us renouncing Christ is something that would be (rightly) held against us! By God’s grace, we’re not only still with each other, but we’re both still with Jesus. Thanks to yet more grace, our children are currently walking with him too.

If you had asked me at the start of my marriage what success looks like, I can’t say I know what I would have said. But I am sure if you had offered me eighteen years still together, with no desire to not be together, still walking with Jesus and with children walking with Jesus, I’d have bit your hand off. I’m certainly more than happy with that.

But I am not complacent. As I keep saying, we’re not even at the shortest long point yet. There’s still plenty of time for things to head south. I’ve got plenty in me that could screw it all up and so does my wife. We are sinners with sinful hearts after all. My kids are still young enough that they have many years to decide they aren’t walking with Jesus. I don’t take any of it for granted or assume such will it always be.

But as of today, I can say that I am so glad to be married to my wife. We are still together, still walking with Jesus and praise him for saving our children too. I suspect that faithfulness is really the result of our parents and grandparents’ faithfulness before us. I am blessed that my children are a fourth generation in my family of believers which began with my grandad. We never had much, but we did have Jesus. I hope that means my kids are the last generation to have my grandad’s sins visited on them (though inevitably they and their children after them will have to endure mine) but I am more hopeful that they might be early on in the thousand generations to experience his faithful love (cf. Ex 34:6-7).

Which is why eighteen years seems so pitiful. Set against four generations of God’s steadfast love, eighteen years of it doesn’t seem nearly so long, does it? But the more positive way to look at that is, if he has been faithful to my family over three generations to me, and four to my children, I am fairly confident my wife and I can rely on another forty years or more of his steadfast love and faithfulness to us. It’s a drop in the bucket really. Which means (and I am hopeful) that we will enjoy many more happy anniversaries yet.