Today I’m married twenty-five years. It’s a significant milestone for sure, but in usual Yoder fashion, we aren’t making a big deal of it. Mr. Yoder is either playing church softball tonight with two of our teen boys or with me at the Verizon store. I’m exhausted from work, and a little in denial that I’m old enough to be married this long. Our trip to Italy is postponed indefinitely until we get more money in the bank, and our kids aren’t singing as the Silver Platters on the Brady Bunch.

Yet this milestone isn’t ignored. I don’t usually write or speak on marriage because marriage is….so personal. In our twenty-five years, we’ve walked easy and hard roads. I don’t have a perfect marriage and won’t give you ten simple steps for a fairy-tale ending. 

But I can share tried-and-true principals for arriving at twenty-five years of marriage in a world where marriages aren’t expected to last. I don’t want you to feel guilty if your marriages haven’t made this milestone. I’ve walked personal journeys with friends and family members whose marriages have ended in heartache. From my own experience, I wondered if my own marriage would break into pieces. 

Today, I’ve arrived at being married twenty-five years. Some years we’ve thrived – those were the first ten. Some years we simply survived – those were the next ten. In the last five, we’re arriving at a balance .

In upcoming posts, I’ll be sharing things I’ve learned about marriage over twenty-five years. I won’t give you the picket-fence version, but what it takes to grow a marriage in dirt, manure and weeds of life beyond the picket fence.

Today, I’m just proud to say, “We’ve made it this far.”

What have been issues you’ve struggled with in marriage? What has held you together when marriage has been the hardest? We want to hear from you – how can we pray and encourage you in your marriage struggle right now?