I have dubbed 2026 as the Milestone Year. No, I'm not talking about the USA celebrating 250 years, it's a personal family thing. Get a load of this list: Our son and daughter-in-love celebrate their 5 year anniversary, my 50th high school reunion; both my sister and sister-in-love turn 60; my father-in-love turns 90; my wife Joy celebrates a special milestone birthday; we celebrate the 20th anniversary Heart of Marriage Retreat; my wife and I celebrate our 35th anniversary and Praise God April 10th Joy will be 20 years cancer free! Yes, this is truly a year of milestone celebrations. In fact, you might ask why is this blog not titled Milestones. Everyone of these milestones lead me to a single phrase: TRUST!
Trust is defined as a firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something. When I consider each of the vast number of milestones mentioned above, I see God's Reliability, God's Truth, God's Ability, and God's Strength having a hand in everyone of them. Yes, every one of these milestones points to God. And while birthdays, anniversaries, even free and clear health designations are not guaranteed, they are all a reminder that we can TRUST God.
So what does this say about marriage. One of the challenges in a marriage is that on our wedding day we heap a lot of faith and trust in the person with whom we're exchanging vowels. Then that person to whom we pledge our eternal love let's us down once or twice and we forget about all of that trust that we placed in them. We might question their reliability or their strength especially if we're judging them through the lens of a typical husband/wife argument. It doesn't help that deep inside we might actually question whether we're holding up our end of the bargain. The answer is don't trust your spouse... TRUST the God that brought the two of you together.
Too often we wives want their husbands to be a knight in shining armor (hmm, sounds like my household), only to be disappointed by a man who actually can't change the oil in the car. Husbands enter marriage expecting a wife who cooks, cleans, watches the kids, and then is ready for mad crazy love making 5 nights a week. You can't put your trust in your unmet expectations that you created in a vacuum. But what you can TRUST is in the words of Stevie Wonder "that God knew exactly where he wanted you to be placed." With every milestone that you experience in your marriage, you can look back and see God's fingerprints all over the situation.
As we move forward into this year, I invite you to join me in making this a year of TRUST. I TRUST that God will manifest his plans for our marriage in 2026. When things don't look the way I had hoped, I will TRUST that God has a plan that has not fully been revealed to me yet. When my wife and I don't see eye to eye, I will TRUST that God will help us get through that time without being hurtful to each other. When one of us is faced with an unforeseen challenge with our health, finances, job or business I will TRUST that God will make a way. In everything that I encounter as we move throughout the year I will TRUST in God's Reliability, God's Truth, God's Ability, and God's Strength.
Whether you're experiencing milestones this year or not, when it comes to your marriage, where will you place your TRUST?