Life is a funny thing. It shifts and changes with time. The person we were when we started walking with God is often very different from the person that we will have become when our walk comes to an end. That is as it should be. Growth—Transition—Change—Blessings—Loss—Overcoming and Becoming—all of these are threads in the overall tapestry of our walk together with God. My life today, the walk that I want to share, began with a promise. It is a promise that has spanned nearly 18 years now. When all is said and done, I pray it will have spanned the fullness of a lifetime. This is my story. It is the beginning of my walk.

The day that David and I got married, there were quite a few prayers said to God on our behalf and possibly a few wagers made. We were young and very much in love, but from absolutely opposite worlds. I had grown up affluent and sheltered. David had grown up poor and fatherless. We did not fully understand what it would mean to join our two very different lives and backgrounds together and make them into one.

As I walked down the aisle, I naively believed we had already overcome any obstacle that could possibly divide us. In my mind, the biggest hurdle left to cross was simply waiting to say ‘I Do’ and become man and wife. After that it would all be easy... cake.  I did not realize that 'I Do' is only a beginning.  It is not the culmination of a relationship, but the starting point.  The real work is yet to come.  

After we exchanged vows, a moment I had been waiting for arrived. There was a promise that I intended to make to the man standing next to me.  I wanted him to know that my love for him knew no boundaries.  To help me, I used the passage from Ruth 1:16-17 (NKJV).

And I, Joy, say to you, David:
“Entreat me not to leave you,
Or to turn back from following after you;
For wherever you go, I will go;

And wherever you lodge, I will lodge;

Your people shall be my people,

And your God, my God.

Where you die, I will die,

And there will I be buried.  

The Lord do so to me, and more also,

If anything but death parts you and me.”

In hindsight, I wonder if God smiled and shook His head a little bit. He knew what I did not yet understand. The promise I had made to “follow my husband anywhere” was so much more than pretty words meant to create a tender moment. It was a promise--a vow--that I would soon be asked to keep. I quickly came to realize that what I had promised before God and what I had meant before God were two very different things.

Six months into our married life, David was laid off from his job.  The News-Talk Radio Station that he worked for had been sold. His whole department had been let go. While we were trying to figure out what to do, he received a phone call from a close friend who had moved to Montana several years prior to start his own paint and wallpaper company. His company was doing well, and he offered David a job.  

Within what seemed like the blink of an eye, I found myself living in a different part of the country, 2000 miles away from family, surrounded by snow—10 feet high in the drifts. We happened to move to Montana during a record-breaking year of snowfall. Needless to say, I wanted out. I hated Montana. I despised the snow. I despised the cold. I began to despise my husband—the man that I had vowed to follow anywhere. I resented him for asking me to keep my promise. This was not in the training manual.

The day of decision finally came. At a Barnes and Nobles Coffee Shop, sitting across from one another, I told David that I wanted out. I wanted to go home. I did not want to live in this 'new place' so far away from everything that I had ever known. I am not sure what I expected. I think that I thought he would bend. We would leave, and life would go on. That is not what happened. David told me that he was staying—if I left, it was on me. He loved me, but Montana was where he saw us building our life together. He was not going back. Besides, he pointed out, I had promised to “follow him anywhere”. He had it on video-tape.

I wanted to scream at him, “But that is not what I meant! I meant that I would follow you ‘almost’ anywhere—as long as it doesn’t require me to leave anything I love behind—or cost me anything.” This was not what I had bargained for. I was scared. I was angry. I was hurting. I had a decision to make. I had a promise to keep.

I was finally beginning to see what those older and wiser had tried to tell me, but that I had not had the wisdom or experience to understand. “Love, is not just a feeling. Feelings come and go. It is an active choice you make each and every day—despite how you may feel. And a promise that you make before God, does not come with ‘take backs’.”

That was the day that I had to decide who I was going to be. Was I going to be a promise keeper or a promise breaker? Was there a limit to my love--boundaries, mile markers, state borders? Was I in this marriage for the long haul? Was I willing to follow my husband?  Somehow I knew that this decision was a defining moment for me--for my marriage--for who I was going to become.  

Almost 18 years later, I thank God that I decided to stay—to keep my promise. Ours was a rocky start. We had much growing up and growing together to do. But whenever I thought about quitting, I remembered that I had a promise to keep. 

What I have grown over the years to understand, is that a marriage is built day in and day out.  It is built upon the foundation of the promise that we make before God to love one another through better or worse, sickness and in health, in blessings and in sorrows.  Marriage is a covenant that mirrors the covenant that we make with God at Baptism--to join our life to Him and to walk with Him all the days of our life.  

Though my promise to 'follow my husband anywhere' felt like the hardest thing I had ever done, it was so worth it.  Keeping that first promise, helped to prepare me for the days and years to come when I would be asked again and again to keep it. By choosing to love, even in the difficult times, love grew.  Love well tended and well cared for, will continue to grow.  Today I can look my husband in the eye and without hesitation, say to him “Wherever you go… I will follow.”