Meet Jan and Lee--Domestic Heroes

We have a policy here at the church that says wedding ceremonies will not be conducted for a couple until they have gone through three hours of premarital counseling.  It's a good policy--and on least one occasion prevented train wreck of a marriage!  But the same policy does not hold for folks who want to renew their wedding vows.  Usually it happens after twenty-five or fifty years, but earlier this winter I got a phone call from a woman named Jan who asked if I could officiate at such a ceremony for her sixtieth wedding anniversary.  I quickly agreed.  Sixty years is pretty impressive!  If we'd done any pre-ceremony counseling I suspect she and her husband could teach me a thing or two!

All that said, I never met them until about twenty minutes before the ceremony.  It was to take place in their rented vacation home here on Sanibel, with their children, grandchildren and a few friends in attendance.  I was greeted at the door by Jan's husband Lee.  As well as the family dog, who made his way in and out of the room throughout the ceremony.

Lee had prepared something for me to read at the ceremony, that was a bit of a history of their relationship.  They met in high school in Kansas City, MO.  In their senior year their lockers were just down the hall from each other.  Lee wrote that he "fell in love with Jan the first time he saw her."

They sang together in the school choir--and Lee made sure to sit right behind Jan.  When the class picnic was scheduled, they made a deal--if Lee would drive, Jan would make some lunch for them to share.  It was their first date.

They got married in 1959, and honeymooned in a borrowed cabin in the Ozarks.  They had two children, a boy and a girl--Joe and Lynn.  And they are enormously proud of both of them, as well as their adult grandchildren.

Earlier in the year, Jan told Lee that wedding vows expired after sixty years, and that they would need to re-up.  He happily agreed!

The vows they actually used were written for the occasion.  Lee vowed to "continue to love you, honor you, and care for you forever."  And Jan declared that their years "together have been a blessing to me."

I suppose none of this is especially extraordinary--yet in this day and age in one in two marriages falter, I for one think we should hold such folks in great esteem.  They are, in so many ways, domestic heroes!

I am pleased to have met Lee and Jan--and to have helped them celebrate their many years of marriage.  (The veil, by the way, that Jan is wearing in the photo, came from the original wedding ceremony!)

Blessings on them both!