What Almost Forty Years With Ken Taught Me About Steady Love

The Kind of Love That Stays

This year my husband Ken and I are approaching almost forty years of marriage. When I say it out loud it still surprises me, not because the years were always easy, but because they were not, and here we still are.

He Stayed Through the Dark Years

There was a long season of my life ruled by fear and anxiety, and it would have been understandable for someone to grow weary walking beside me through it. Ken did not. His steady, unwavering support was one of the ways God carried me through the darkest years. He did not try to fix me. He stayed with me. And there is a quiet power in someone who simply refuses to leave.

What I Have Learned

If I could hand a few things to a younger couple, it would be these:

• Steady beats spectacular. Grand gestures are lovely, but it is ordinary faithfulness, showing up again and again, that actually builds a marriage.
• Support each other’s healing. You do not have to have it all together to love well. Sometimes the most loving thing is patience while the other person grows.
• Build it on something bigger than the two of you. Our marriage has weathered what it has because it was never resting on us alone.

Still Going

We raised five sons and now have nine grandchildren, and we are stepping into a new season of building together. Almost forty years in, I can tell you the steady kind of love is worth every bit of the wait.