Vows

What are vows? 

A promise?  A solemn oath?  A formal and dignified guarantee?

Something to work towards EVERYTHING SINGLE DAY whether you feel like it or not.

Eighteen years ago today, I took the following vows:

"In the name of God,
I, Mary Ann Otis,
take you, Theodore Mattingly,
to be my husband,
to have and to hold from this day forward,
for better,
for worse,
for richer,
for poorer,
in sickness
and in health,
to love and to cherish,
until we are parted by death.
This is my solemn vow."

In the last 18 years, we have gone through all of those things this side of Heaven.

Has it always been easy?
Not at all.
There are days when we both choose to fight for our marriage even when we are so angry or disappointed or both in the other.
Those are the times we learn to love stronger.
We have lived through abundant financial means.
We have also known what it is like to say "no" to more things than "yes" as we live paycheck to paycheck and then not have a paycheck.
In sickness.
In health. 
Cancer is a terrible sickness, so is the man cold, or spraining an ankle, or having a surgery.  Sickness makes the health seem so much more glorious to me.  Health is something to take advantage of.  To truly go out and do something you enjoy doing every single day while you still can because one day you may get a phone call that will turn your world inside out but because you took a vow and because you love deeper than you ever thought possible, you do what do you need to do to prolong the final parting of a marriage that has best thing that has ever happened to you.

That is my solemn vow.