Sunday’s soapbox is yours to use as you will – within the bounds of decency and absence of defamation. You’re welcome to look back or forward, discuss issues of the moment, to pontificate, ponder or point us to something of interest, to educate, elucidate or entertain, amuse, bemuse or simply muse, but not abuse.

Remember that creating a successful marriage is like farming: you have to start over again every morning. – H. Jackson Brown Jr

A good marriage isn’t something you find, it’s something you make, and you have to keep on making it.
I chose these quotes because my farmer and I have just reached another decade of marriage.
I’m not sure there’s a rational reason that a decade anniversary should have any more significance than any other but this one has been an occasion for reflection and counting blessings.
One of those reflections is that the relatively high number of people celebrating longer marriages in recent years might not continue.
People are living longer but marrying later, if at all.
If you marry in your 20s, as many of my contemporaries did, the chances of celebrating ruby, golden, and diamond (40th, 50th and 60th) anniversaries are a lot higher than if you marry when you’re older.
Of course a long marriage doesn’t necessarily mean it’s always a happy one and I don’t know anyone who is happily married who hasn’t had some rough patches. A dear friend who has been married more than 50 years once told me, in jest but with an element of resignation, she’d never contemplated divorce but murder had crossed her mind on a few occasions.
When writing services as a celebrant, I often think about what marriage means and what makes it works.
The answers to that are as diverse as the individuals who become couples and the partnership that ensues.
But marriage is a decision. Once you’ve made the decision you both have to do all you can to make it work, enjoying the highs and enduring the lows, and staying committed to each other and your marriage as the traditional vows say – for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish as long as we both shall live.
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