I can’t remember our early years of marriage without remembering the story. Once, twice, three times a week—as we lay in bed, his arm wrapped around me, wrapping up another day—he’d start the story with the same question:
Do you remember the day we met?
No answer required. All on his own, my husband unraveled the tale of how we met, his first impression of me, the outfit I wore, and the way the sun shone through the shell of a building we were surveying that day.
As we lived our first year of marriage, the story grew. Telling a little more.
Do you remember our honeymoon at the Opryland with my mother, my father, my sister, my brother-in-law, my grandmother, and my grandfather? And that riverboat with the gold railing everywhere? That was…an interesting trip.
Do you remember the day we came home and found the envelope of cash in our mailbox and we were able to go buy something for dinner besides tuna and mac and cheese?
On the hard days of being newlyweds, when tempers would collide and bananas would take flight, he would always end the day with the story of us. I’d fall asleep to his voice as he told me the story of our love.
I can remember this routine vividly until year four of our marriage. I can’t remember why it stopped or when, but the story of us grew quiet and we stopped remembering together.
Instead, we lived at a breakneck pace—ministry responsibilities, young children, saving for a home, working extra to put money away, building relationships, moving, and feeling lonely. All the noise and static and coming and going created too much interference—offered too much distraction.
I was living. He was living. But we were writing our stories on different pages, hoping the plot would intersect enough that our characters would remain entangled.
Until one day they weren’t. I don’t remember when we stopped living life together. I don’t remember when the “us” became a “me” and a “him.” But one day I woke up and realized that if we weren’t together—if we weren’t married—very little would change except our household budget.
It was a sobering reality. And one we refused to embrace. Dollars didn’t define us. Square footage did not contain us. Travels did not seduce us. Possessions did not possess us. The story of us never included down-payments, salaries, air miles, nor possessions. In fact, it was always the opposite—the story of us spanned the years when we had nothing but each other. Our story traced the trail of God’s provision. Our story announced that love was determined by connectedness and not by networks—by knowing each other’s business, not by busyness.
Do you remember the time we almost forgot we were in love?
Recently we’ve been counseling with a couple who had forgotten that they loved each other. Their daily schedules, their hobbies, their friends—none of those things included the other. As we sat in their living room and I listened to them talk, the middle-aged man and woman faded and in their place I saw a young woman who longed to be heard and a young man who longed for adventure.
“Tell me the story of how you met,” I asked.
And the husband began their story. And as he told it, the wife cried at the remembering.
Jesus understood the intimacy that comes with remembering. Just before he lived out the closing chapter of the greatest love story of all time, he gathered around a table with his friends and tried to explain just how much of himself he was sacrificing so that “he” and “they” would be united for eternity.
It was communion they shared. An intimate exchange of memories and feelings for the purpose of honoring the covenant—the deep rooted relationship—between mankind and God.
“Do this in remembrance of me…”
Let us honor the deep-rooted relationship we have with God by remaining deeply rooted in our marriages. Let a community of two be rooted in communion. Let us find intimacy in the remembrance. Let us forever tell the story of how we met.
Do you remember the days when we would lay in the dark and you would tell all your thoughts about me as we fell in love…
