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Lessons of a 75-year Marriage

Lessons of a 75-year Marriage


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I have had an incredible experience I would like to share with you today. It's an accumulation of about the last five years or so. I have had the privilege to regularly visit a couple named Ralph and Barbara Smith from Draper, Utah. Today I want to share with you the lessons I learned from this 75-year marriage. I think there is a reason I had the privilege of sitting back and watching what 75 years of marriage can do. I think for some reason I needed this lesson. Maybe it has to do with the fact that I talk about marriage and relationships all the time. I needed to see a great witness of one. And I saw one in Ralph and Barbara. In all honesty, what I have seen from Barbara and Ralph, after loving each other and hearing literally hundreds of stories between the two of them over the years, I think what I am learning is that love is not just a feeling. That is a great by-product; yet in reality love is much more.

As C.S. Lewis says: "Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as it can be obtained." Love is work, devotion, empathy, consideration, trust, acceptance, and even pain and sadness. Is it really worth the effort? I have learned many life lessons from this beautiful couple and today I would like to share just a few of them.

How you talk about your significant other is a strong indicator of how strong your marriage is.

Ralph tells his stories with such reverence. "I saw her; right up front in the movie, I saw this beautiful platinum hair." And he says, "That was it." He knew he needed to meet this woman. He just had to go up to the front and sit with her. He just fell in love with her. Then he would start telling all the stories about how they would date, and about when she went back up to Idaho, how he could hardly wait to have her come back. But he knew right then that this was the woman. Notice how he would talk about her; the reverence he had as he told the story. He was speaking from the depths of his heart.

You sometimes have to lose yourself in service.

One of my favorite lessons about Ralph and Barbara is simply the idea that sometimes in love you have to lose yourself, right? Sometimes in love you have to be willing to let yourself go. You have to be careful with that because sometimes we give ourselves up, and then we really do not have our own identity. That's not what I'm talking about. When two people have their own identities, they are strong and confident and capable, and they know how to be a human being, even by themselves. Then you can reach out with a partner and lose yourself in the service of that person. I believe that is where you find the love. The purpose of life, that Emerson taught, is not simply to be happy. It is to be useful, it is to be honorable, to be compassionate, and make some difference, because you have lived and you have lived well. That is the purpose of life.

There is a lot of power in predictability.

A lot of us this day and age think, "You know what, a predictable marriage is a boring marriage." And honestly it's not. One of the greatest things that create trust and longevity in a relationship is some predictability. Ralph and Barbara had a very predictable marriage that was full of love and full of touch. I remember one time we showed up at their house, they didn't even lock the door and my family would all just walk in. They were sitting on the couch in silence just holding each other's hands. They have a ritual of touching, of connecting, and of being there, and loving each other. Ritualistic, whether people are coming or not, they would be sitting by each other holding hands. This was very predictable. Life is not always perfect, not always fun, but life is about growing love one act at a time.

Change is ok.

Life wasn't always perfect for this beautiful couple. One of the lessons I have learned from them is the fact that change is ok. I won't get into many of the details, but this couple, when they got into their late 80's, Barbara realized she needed to make a change in her life to help her handle things better - to help her handle her emotions and her family better, and she was willing to make changes. At 89 years old she changed. This was about the time we met her. She was willing to change and to realize that life is about learning, growing and changing.

Open yourself up.

Open up your heart to other people. If the Smiths had not let the Townsend family into come visit them, we would have never grown to understand some of these great lessons about marriage - and some of these amazing lessons about just dealing with life. A lot of times I notice that we just don't let people in. We don't let them into our heart; we don't let them into our lives; we don't even let them into our homes; we don't let them into our time or our schedule. In the end when you are sitting there seeing people mourning over the loss of their grandma and great grandma, you will see it's all about the relationships. It's the people and relationships that are going to matter. That's a very powerful lesson that Ralph and Barbara taught me. It's about the relationships. It's about the simple peace; it's about the simple joy.

Your life matters . . . do you know that? Sometimes we get caught up in this world so much that we may not always recognize that we are making a difference - that people are watching you, that there are grandchildren watching you. I got to witness this beautiful man at 98, right after he saw that his wife had passed. It was the most humbling lesson I have ever seen. He just held her. He put his head on her chest and just sobbed. I thought, "Whoa, 75 years with another human being, and this is how it ends! He just loves her so much!

"The truth is that the more intimately you know someone, the more clearly you'll see their flaws. That's just the way it is. This is why marriages fail, why children are abandoned, why friendships don't last. You might think you love someone until you see the way they act when they're out of money or under pressure or hungry, for goodness' sake. Love is something different. Love is choosing to serve someone and be with someone in spite of their filthy heart. Love is patient and kind, love is deliberate. Love is hard. Love is pain and sacrifice, it's seeing the darkness in another person and defying the impulse to jump ship." - The Great Kamryn

Ask yourself, how are you doing in that regard? It doesn't have to be just marriage, right? How are you doing as a parent? How are you doing as a friend, or a sister or a child or a brother or a daughter? How are you doing with your neighbors? Are you letting people in? Are you noticing you are not feeling a lot of feelings for other people? If that is the case, perhaps you are not feeling because you are not giving, you're not doing, you're not out there risking, and you're not opening yourself up. Do a little evaluation. There is nothing that can bring more color to life more insight, more excitement, more peace, more opportunity than letting others in and risking a little bit more. Again a tribute to Ralph and Barbara Smith, even though she is gone now, none of it is lost. It is benefited by all of us. The great paradox, love is hard, can be painful and sad, but YES it is worth it!

- Dr. Matt Townsend

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