As I stand in front of nearly 20 years of marriage, my heart knows the grace of an everyday, mundane love story. Tonight, may we all find the miracle in a love that says, “I still choose you.”

Blessed are those whose love story is written in simplicity of the mundane, whose vows are kept in the humdrum and otherwise unremarkable places of life, whose hours are counted in dirty diapers and piles of laundry and midnight ice cream runs.

For they know the grace of an everyday, “I still do.”

Blessed are those whose stroll in the park is exchanged for walks in hospital hallways and physical therapy rooms, whose hands steady feet and tie shoes, whose heart carries the world and holds life together while time is counted in breaths and heartbeats.

For they know what it is to walk on sacred ground.

Blessed are those who find each other in the comfort of sweatpants and pajama bottoms, who see one another just as they are, who choose love even when it isn’t new or shiny or blissful.

For they know the peace of being known.

Blessed are those who face the better or worse of screaming newborns in the middle of the night, who carry the hurt of broken tween dreams, who hold teen babies with shattered hearts.

For they know life is better faced side-by-side, heart by heart.

Blessed are those who stand beside grave stones, who sit through silent sonograms, who dry tears that come only when the world falls down.

For they know that the reality of til death do us part and show up anyways.

Blessed are those who find each other in the middle of a saggy mattress, who find respite in their smelly mini van, who fight forward for a life that leans into His grace, vowing to do better than whatever came before.

For they know a love that not only says “I do…”

But they have also chosen to live it too.

"Let all that you do be done in love."

1 Corinthians 16:14