Last September, my
husband Bill and I celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary, as did four of my
roommates from my senior year at Marquette. The five of us and our husbands,
along with two other Marquette couples and a total of 14 children, gathered in
the middle of the Marquette campus at the St. Joan of Arc Chapel for a Mass and
renewal of vows.
As
Marquette students, we had often attended 10 p.m. daily Mass together at the
chapel. Now, thirteen years out of college, we were back in the tiny chapel.
And the theme seemed to be sippy cups.
As
we prayed together, sang and broke bread, there was the constant underlying
noise of small children. A book being dropped. A pacifier being thrown. A
question being asked in a loud stage whisper. And occasionally, a wriggling,
crying toddler who was quickly scooped up and taken outside the chapel for a
few minutes.
We
listened and prayed as we could, and the children participated in the liturgy
as they were able. Jacob and Jeremiah, both 8, proclaimed the second reading
together, and a few of the preschoolers brought up the gifts. It was not the
quiet, reflective Joan of Arc Mass of our college days, nor was it nearly as
formal or well-organized as our weddings. Instead, the liturgy bore witness to
our mode of worship and of living right now — noisy and messy and full of
interruptions, with the vows and the Eucharist in the middle of it all.
And I couldn’t
help but think, as I stood with my friends and made those promises to my
husband once again, that we all understood so much more of what we were
promising this time around. We knew about arguments and tears; about loss of
jobs and late nights with sick children; we even understood more about the true
duration of a lifelong promise. There were no flowing white dresses to give us
the illusion that we were beginning a fairy tale. And because of these things,
I believe that our 10-year anniversary vows held more weight than our original
ones could have hoped for. Having experienced both the joy and the sorrow of
marriage, we were coming back for more.
As our children
watched, the older ones from their chairs, the younger ones in our arms, we
vowed once again to be true to each other in good times and in bad, in sickness
and in health; we vowed to love and honor each other all the days of our lives.
And then, our
children, who somehow managed to make living those vows both more wonderful and
more difficult than I could have imagined as a young bride, clapped for us as
we kissed.
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