THE BROKEN GOBLET

"Marriage is perhaps the first opportunity really to know ourselves, our weaknesses

and our capacities."  ~E.E.

 Now 40 plus years later, I am bemused by the mythical man I envisioned God would send me.  I would have thrown out my list and concentrated more on praying that God would change both of us to be more like Jesus.
The daily business of loving and living with someone who is part of me but not, someone who isn't like me but  discovering how different I am.
Someone once said "We're none of us prize packages--just look for the essentials..." 

My everyday spaces were invaded by that marvelous man who wooed me when I had no clue of what was to hit me in the years ahead. He has sat next to me for 40 plus years.
I stand by that man who gets a traffic ticket on the 5 freeway for going to slow because he was watching the Good Year Blimp float over head.
I marvel at the fact that he skidded on his motorcycle at 40 to 50 miles per hour on the Hollywood freeway during morning rush hour and lived to survive.
I am constantly reminded that my Man is
fallible and sinful, and so am I.

It takes
a great deal of the grace of God for us to manage to live together, year in and year
out.
There is no normal marriage and how do we know what is normal anyway.  "Love always hopes" from the Cor.13. 
  My marriage is forged on hope, faith, and grace that could only come from One far greater than us.
My man and I have hope, 
 we have weathered storms, been challenged by crisis, "tempered by love, sealed by God above,"

Even when the better in "for better or worse" seems so far away. 
 "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts (Isaiah 55:8,9)."

A love/and not so in love relationship with anything that requires consistency can at times become very challenging.
 I’m just thankful for maturity that reminds me I need to do things I don't want to do. I need grace to live up to my vows with my husband.
I am often reminded of a symbol of our resiliency during our early years of "marital bliss".

 The story behind drinking wine is the intent of the winemaker to embibe in a stylish wine glass.  I am led to believe that we received someones "white elephant"  re gift as we unwrapped our wedding gifts and found two perfectly matched wine glasses when neither of us had ever drank or given wine a second thought.
  As with great stories, a stylish glass may have reflected our personal story.  It began with a salad, not wine.

  We carefully unwrapped that pair of stemmed wine goblets, designed to make an  inherently delightful activity even better.
As we gently place them on a newly thick carpeted floor one toppled over and broke, leaving only one that I recently rediscovered on a top shelf. 

That set of exquisite wine goblets became just one in an instant of broken things, a picture of grace for the future  broken worldly baggage.

Just the basics.

  That one goblet sits on the shelf of my china cabinet and is an incident my husband and I refer to periodically, the day that the other goblet broke.