Twenty-six years ago today, I woke up to rain. Not metaphorical rain. Actual rain. The kind of rain that makes a twenty-year-old groom stare out the window and realize the outdoor wedding he had imagined is being quietly, efficiently, and completely dismantled by the sky.
Mary and I had already lived a lifetime together by then, or at least what felt like one. We started dating as kids at fifteen, somehow found each other in the strange fog of adolescence, and six years later we were standing on the edge of marriage at twenty and twenty-one. We were still so young, but also already woven together in that mysterious way that only time, friendship, stubbornness, and love can accomplish.
For a few minutes that morning, I’m sure it felt like disaster. Plans had been made. Flowers had been placed. A version of the day existed in our minds, and then the world did what the world tends to do: it refused to cooperate.
So everyone went to work. Family members started moving plants inside. Someone found a building for the reception. People carried, rearranged, adapted, improvised. What had been carefully planned became something else entirely. And then, somehow, after all the chaos and wet shoes and frantic problem-solving, our beautiful wedding still happened.
Looking back now, it feels less like an unfortunate beginning and more like an omen. Not the spooky kind. The useful kind.
Because in many ways, that morning was the first little symbol of what the next twenty-six years of marriage would become. Plans washed away by the rain of life. Goals interrupted. Timelines rewritten. Dreams rearranged. Again and again, Mary and I have found ourselves standing in the middle of some new weather, looking at the pieces on the ground, and deciding together what could still be made.
And somehow, over and over, we made something beautiful.
In twenty-six years of marriage, we have lived in nine homes across seven towns. We have been guardians to five dogs. We have changed jobs, directions, identities, beliefs, routines, and probably more versions of ourselves than we could ever fully count. We have been broke, tired, confused, hopeful, grieving, laughing, healing, and occasionally ridiculous. We have lived a multitude of lives inside this one life.
And then, eight years ago, all of those lives opened into the most beautiful creation in the history of existence: Jettie Jane.
Yes, I know that may sound biased. I am comfortable with that.
There are too many stories to summarize. Too many storms. Too many sunny days. Too many tiny moments that now feel enormous because time has softened their edges and revealed their meaning. Marriage, at least from where I stand today, is not a single vow repeated unchanged forever. It is a living thing. It has to move. It has to bend. It has to survive weather.
And maybe that is what I am most grateful for today. Not that life has been easy. It hasn’t. Not that every plan worked. It absolutely did not. Not that we somehow avoided the rain.
But that from the very beginning, we learned how to move the plants inside.
We learned how to look at the ruined version of the day and still find the wedding. We learned how to become different people without losing each other. We learned how to build new rooms inside old promises. We learned, again and again, that love is not proven by the absence of storms, but by what two people are willing to carry together when the rain starts falling.
Today, I am happier and more fulfilled than I have ever been. Not because life is without challenge, but because we have transcended so many of those challenges together. So maybe the old superstition is true. Maybe rain on your wedding day is good luck.
Or maybe luck is what love becomes when two people keep choosing to make something beautiful out of whatever weather arrives.