12 years!

Yesterday was our 12th wedding anniversary.

Here are some fun facts:

• I was 24, Keith was 22. We’ve been married for one third of my life. I was born in the year of the bird, and we got married in the year of the bird.
• We have lived in three countries, in eight different homes.
• To go along with all those homes, we have attended and served in six churches.
• When we got married, my side of the (immediate) family became five people. Keith’s side became nine people. Now, my family has seven, and Keith’s has eighteen (wow).
• We had between us four grandparents, and now we have none.
• We had between us two college degrees; now we have five degrees, and both of us have passed an important Japanese language exam.
• I was intending to be a professional musician of some sort. Keith was vocationally challenged, but had some vague notion of wanting to become a teacher. Neither of us had any intention then of becoming a missionary or other full-time ministry worker. We’ll just comment that God has a sense of humor.
• We started this blog to distribute wedding information. Looking back at my first post, it seems that blogs were called weblogs or web blogs, and you could only have one picture in each post. This post is #382. 

Since I am now part of a team that plans worship services at church, I (selfishly?) chose our wedding songs for yesterday’s service (All Creatures of Our God and King, Shout to the Lord, and Blessed Be Your Name). Of course, we sang them in Japanese translation. They fit well with the text, which was Genesis 22. This became a good reminder of the theme we chose for our wedding: to love one another and serve God, whatever the circumstances.

Yesterday turned out to be quite a bit nicer than our 10th anniversary: although we had planned to climb Mt. Fuji, both of us ended up sick in bed… and wondering if we would even be well enough to fly to Seattle for home assignment two days later. Yesterday was a full day at church, but we managed to go to a cafe we like for a slice of cake and take a walk on the boardwalk at the beach.

I wonder where our path will go next? Can't see around the corner...

Our garden produced an anniversary present... a reminder of what was in my bouquet. :)

But the past two years have been the hardest of our lives (so far…) I’m thankful that our marriage started with a commitment to love God in all seasons and in all circumstances. I’m thankful that God has provided a faithful traveling companion in all this mess--through challenges, we have become even closer.

And now, since I have learned through marriage among other things to have a sense of humor, here are a few of the sillier pictures from our wedding day. It's a pity I don't seem to have the one of Janet ironing my dress while I was wearing it on my computer. (We got married at a time when people were still using film.)

"I don't care how good they smell; DON'T eat my bouquet, Keith..."

This wasn't particularly silly, except that Sarah is sitting on Chris' lap.

Whose bouquet did Colin steal, I wonder?

Trying to look regal, I guess.