Ten years ago today, when my husband and I were young enough to be confident, we stood in front of friends and family and promised things to each other. We promised to freely give our love, our time, our bodies, and our wills. We promised that to the best of our ability we would model Christ and His Church.

And it was beautiful.

Almost too beautiful, because little did we realize what we were actually promising; little did we understand that giving all those things actually meant sacrifice. And not in the poetic way we had used the word. No, it meant what it is: broken, bloody, excruciating death. It meant dying like Christ. It meant crucifixion.

And it meant failing because even our best promises that day were destined to be broken. Instead of loving, we have been selfish, we have been petulant, we have been angry. Instead of faithful, we have been faithless. We have suffered, not simply for each other, but because of each other--we have driven the nails into each other’s hands.

But there was another thing that we didn’t realize that day--Someone else was making promises too. Promises like,

I will never leave you or forsake you.

I am close to the brokenhearted. I rescue those whose spirits are crushed.

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you.

I know the plans I have for you… plans for good, not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.

I am the resurrection and the life.

And it has been these promises that have brought us through the last ten years; it will be these promises that will carry us through even more. It is the promise that in the thousand deaths we have and will die, He will raise us up again; that when everything seems beyond hope, He will stretch out His hand with mercy and love; that He will be our resurrection and life.

So, today, I smile a bit to think how blissfully ignorant we were ten years ago, how utterly incapable we were of keeping our promises. But today, I’ll also laugh out loud with sheer joy to think that He wasn’t and He isn’t.