In Sickness and In Health

Jacob can be so funny.

Last night he was eating some waffles as a mid-evening snack (I am in the running for the Father-Of-The-Year award, and I'm pretty sure it's determined by the vote of the children?). Mouthful of waffle, he looks up at me and says, "Dad, I just don't know very much about you and mom's wedding."

I said, "Well, you were there. Don't you remember it?" He was nine months old.

"No, not really," he said, "maybe a little bit but not very much".

"I think we have a DVD around here somewhere of our wedding. Do you want to watch it?" I asked.

"I think I'd like that," he said, wrinkling his brow, thinking about it deeply. So we dug around until we found the DVD Lesley's aunt made for us, and watched it before bedtime last night.

I had forgotten that on our wedding day, I was sick. I had one of the worst cold's of my life. My voice was scratchy and crackly. I had difficulty breathing. Lesley gave it to me as an early wedding present.

It occurred to me as I watched myself say those words, "I promise to be true to you in sickness and in health," that the wedding vows really don't stipulate specifically who is sick.

I think often we hear those words (or speak those words) and interpret them to mean that we will care for our spouses whether whether they are sick or healthy. We are called to be just as true to them when we are the sick ones. What if it were Lesley's mother or father, or my mother? My vow is no less in force.

I'm sitting in the hospital room with Nathaniel, who is up and down. I am called to love my wife through his sickness, too.

I'm not sure exactly what that means right now, because I don't know how Lesley is going to need to be loved through Nathaniel's illness.

Isn't that part of the adventure? What an act of faith! Lesley believed me when I told her I would love and honor her all the days of my life. It's a good thing she didn't know on that day that I don't have the slightest clue how to do that. The other fact is, I'm very lucky, because Lesley is pretty good at letting me know how.

Ultimately, marriage is the beginning of the grand adventure. When husband and wife pledge those vows that day, they don't know what the future is going to bring. There's absolutely no way that I could have predicted having a child be as sick as Nathaniel is. But that's ok. My promise holds, and so does Lesley's. We will be true to each other, love and honor each other, in good times and in bad, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, all the days of our lives. We will teach each other how to love each other for the rest of our lives, and through anything that this beautiful, funny life might throw at us.

And that's very comforting to me.