In The Bliss of Time

First day on the beach together at Corolla, nc

This past week I celebrated my thirtieth wedding anniversary with my Wife Diane at Corolla, NC. This was the first time we have gone away without kids for multiple days. It was a great weekend that we enjoyed together and had many opportunities to reminisce about the past. The reason we ended up in OBX was that this was the place where the love for the beach started back in 1995. Back then we were invited by a bunch of friends to share the expense and being newly married with our firstborn it was a cheap way to be in some ocean front property.
One of the high lights was that we did find the first beach house we stayed in called Corolla Knights, now called Role Tide.

The first beach house we stayed in as a family

During one of the conversations about being married this long my wife made the comment that it was 30 years of bliss. Bliss? Perfect happiness or great joy? Not the word I would use but it did get me to think if it fit our relationship. It's not that I think that Diane isn't my greatest love or best friend, because she is that to me. The connotation is that only good things have happened and it has been one big party. kind of fluffy, but all of us who are married know that isn't it. It's angry arguments, foolish talk, weeping, asking forgiveness, and having mercy mixed in. Then throw in kids and maybe loosing a loved one. It's good, it's hard, it's fun, it's faithfulness, it's bliss.

I like the analogy of marriage being like the making of a diamond. In the beginning it is like a lump of coal. Not worth very much and only good for burning. When you add some time and a load of pressure eventually it turns into something else. That something else is plucked from the ground and gets cut, rubbed, and polished to become a precious gem. My friendship with Diane is becoming that gem. That gem of bliss.

My art business is just like it. It has it's ups and downs, victory and failures, and more hard work doing things I'm not gifted in like accounting and marketing. But a take away for me while at Corolla was that the place where we stayed had some new art work decorating the walls. It was my art work. A first for me to see the work and vision I had done right in front of me. The pressure, the cutting, the rub, and polish is starting to pay off.

I hope you see that for yourselves with family and the ones you love. Having laughter is great and smooth times with others are welcomed, but 'A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for a time of adversity' (Prov. 17:17). Bliss is made up of all types of circumstances.