25 years. My husband and I have been married 25 years today! I don’t know how we got here. I mean, I do but I don’t.

In our newlywed years, we never doubted our “together foreverness.” We were young and in love. We couldn’t imagine anything derailing that. We were a love-at-first-sight couple and our wedding was one fun party. So, we just figured we were one of those couples with a bullet-proof marriage. But, as our marriage grew in age, we began to witness the separations and subsequent divorces of friends. A few of them were not surprises – to them or us. However, more often than not one of the two spouses was completely blindsided by the split. You’ve heard it, too. Cue a random Tuesday in July. She comes home from work like she always does, tells him that she isn’t happy, that she hasn’t been happy in years and that she is leaving. They had just spent the weekend together having dinner with friends, doing yard work, watching a movie. Everything seemed fine. She seemed fine. He is completely blindsided. And this is a terrible situation because the spouse that has been unhappy for years has been molding this moment in her mind for a long time. She is prepared. But for the spouse that is blindsided, this is devastating. He’s had no preparation, no chance to see it coming and now he’s desperate to work on saving his marriage and she’s already long gone – literally and figuratively. How’s that going to work in marriage counseling? It isn’t and it doesn’t.

As these marriages were falling like cards around us, Matt and I would continue to be shocked by the couples that were dissolving. We started to look at each other and acknowledge “If it could happen to them, then it could certainly happen to us.” I’m not talking infidelity, lawlessness, drug use, or some other “well, obviously” marriage dagger. Many of these couples were so like us. I understand that we can never really know what goes on behind closed doors, but several couples were as similar to us as I could ever imagine. So, yes, if it could happen to them, then it could certainly happen to us. Scary.

So, how did we get so lucky to be here together, 25 years later? The truth is, I don’t know! Seriously, I don’t have an answer. But, as I replayed those 25 years in my head, I kept returning to something that Matt and I have been practicing since we realized that divorce doesn’t discriminate. We check in with each other. It goes like this:

Hey, we’re good, right? We’re still good? Remember, we always say that if we are not good, we will say it and we will start the work to fix it. So, look me in the eye and tell me how you are.

This is not on a schedule. It doesn’t happen every Sunday at 4. It just happens every few weeks or months. If there’s been another heartbreak on a marriage train, then it’s going to happen more often because that’s scary. If life is flowing like a river, then it’s going to happen less often because that’s bliss. We just check in with each other. And we’ve been doing it ever since our first friend was blindsided.

Does this bulletproof our marriage? Nope. But, do you know what it does do? It allows us to live in a tiny fraction of uncertainty, comfortably. Marriage is uncertain. It might only be a very tiny bit of uncertainty, but it’s uncertain. And this is because no matter what vows we take, words we say, or acts we do for the other, we can never, ever be 100% certain that our marriage will last until death. We can’t. And the reason we can’t is that we can never know for certain what is actually happening inside of our spouse’s heart and mind. So no matter how much my husband does for me, says to me, or showers onto me, there will always be a small space of uncertainty because I can’t be in his mind and know his thoughts. It is in this space of uncertainty that I have to trust in us. I have to trust that his actions and words are true. Marriage is uncertain but uncertainty doesn’t have to equate to doubt.

We are currently raising teenagers. This has been our marriage’s greatest test and is the hardest thing we’ve ever done. By this point, we have been on our knees countless times. We have even been flat on the floor. And when there is as serious of an issue as a teen’s life at stake and the two of us are at odds as to the right plan of action, fissures form quickly in the marriage. We have had some terrifying marriage moments in the last five years. Checking in has been crucial. Because when one of us spoke these words “I’m actually not okay. We are not okay right now” for the very first time, we both cried a river. It was so, so painful. We had never answered the “Hey, we’re good, right?” question that way before. We were already struggling at parenting and now, one of us had pointed out that the marriage was in a brutal hailstorm. We almost didn’t know what to do. I think we looked at each other and said “Does this mean it’s over? Did we not make it??” I can laugh about it now, but we truly weren’t sure of the next steps or what it meant for our future.

Marriage is some hard, hard work. You have to check its pulse every so often. Give it some oxygen, or a nap, or a vacation. I think that’s how we got to these 25 years. We started asking “how are we doing?” and we learned to not fear the answers, however painful they might be.

Happy 25th Anniversary to my husband, Matt, who really does make my life sparkle like the sunshine. May we never be afraid to ask, and answer, the hard questions.

“Look me in the eye and tell me how you are.”