Our 30th anniversary didn’t turn out the way we planned. Kind of like our thirty-year marriage. We had to cancel the trip we’ve been dreaming about and settle for our ordinary life instead. As I watched you play basketball with our sons in the driveway last night, ending our day-long anniversary celebration, I realized our ordinary life hasn’t been ordinary at all.

It’s been miraculous.

While writing you this letter, I looked up the symbol for the 30th anniversary. It’s the pearl, though I doubt you care. You’ve never been good at getting me presents. Gifts to you are like sand in an oyster’s shell. They irritate you. The oyster spends years wrapping a speck of sand until a pearl develops. The way our marriage has developed. From standing before a man dressed like Elvis at Chapel of the Bells in Reno on a Tuesday night, to three decades later, you playing basketball with our boys in the driveway.

We really should be empty-nesters by now. Our first three kids are grown and have babies of their own. But on our first date, we confessed to each other we wanted a big family, which surprised us both. Neither of us expected that from the other.

You were a 19 year old boy on a motorcycle in a black leather jacket and torn jeans. I had one older brother, a nice little Celica with a sunroof, and was a senior in high school. Three years after that first date, I was scared to death to marry you. “Why get married?” I asked in an argument the day before we eloped. “From what I can see marriage is a crap shoot. I don’t want to get married.”

Let’s just say our dating years were rocky. My parents were in a rocky marriage. Love was more like a stone thrown at you when you weren’t fast enough, or smart enough to duck.

“Marry me or pack your bags and move out,” you said in a fierce, quiet way, with an intensity in your blue eyes that stunned me in 1989. We were living with two other college students. All of us closing in on graduation.

So I packed. And stood on a snow-covered porch looking out over a city of neon lights. I was working two jobs–at a Catholic daycare run by nuns, and cocktail waitressing at a casino– while going to school full time. I made good money, was bright-eyed with writing dreams, I didn’t need a man in my life.

With my feet going numb in the snow, I pondered getting into my little Celica with the sunroof and driving away. Eventually finding someone safer to love. Someone not so breath-taking. Someone who couldn’t break my heart.

Finally, I went back into our condo, threw my bag in the closet, and crawled into bed with you. “So you’ll marry me?” you whispered past the frost in my hair, pulling me against your warm chest. I could hear the relief in your voice. “You’re so cold,” you said, rubbing your hands all over my body to warm me up. I was still in my clothes.

I buried my face against your chest and nodded yes, knocking the tears out of my eyes onto your skin. I never thought our marriage would last. I just knew I didn’t want to wake up to anyone else but you. The thought of losing you scared me more than marriage.

You asked last night if it was okay– like you’d failed me somehow– because basketball with our sons in the driveway topped our 30th wedding celebration. We’d spent the day roaming Davis, a small college town where God renewed our marriage eighteen years ago. At our favorite grocery store deli, we grabbed lunch and then hit a thrift store full of books and college girls’ jeans. You know me so well. Books and well-worn jeans make me happier than diamonds or pearls ever could.

Since we settled on our farm, investing mostly in our seven kids, it’s often been hard to make ends meet. Sure we could have taken a different road, devoted ourselves to high-powered jobs, had fewer kids, taken more vacations, chose not to pour our blood, sweat, and tears into a farm, but I can’t imagine a richer life than what we have now.

From time to time, we’ve asked ourselves what really matters. “Jesus, you and the kids,” I always tell you and you say it back to me. “Jesus, you and the kids.” Our marriage hasn’t been anything like I imagined. We haven’t divorced. Careers didn’t consume us. You’ve never cheated on me.

We gave up on doing it our way and walked into church on a Sunday morning to sit and listen when we finally hit the end of ourselves. We were fragile twenty years ago. And knew our marraige wouldn’t make it without God’s help. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve prayed at this altar. Our kids snapped this picture of us on Sunday and messaged it to me. “Love how you pray together,” they said. I wanted to respond, “It’s why we’ve stayed together. It’s why our love is strong.”

I used to think Sunday mornings in church saved us, but now I know only Jesus saves. You have to find the Lord, and keep finding each other again and again whether you go to church or not.

You’re no longer the 22 year old ROTC cadet I eloped with three decades ago. I am not the terrified college girl who left footprints in the snow on the sidewalk outside of Chapel of the Bells. If I could put my finger on the secret of our love it would be faith over fear. I’m so grateful I took a chance on love instead of running away in Reno. That I chose faith over fear, and many times since have had to do it again.

Faith over fear.

With each pregnancy– seven times– faith over fear. With each new job, faith over fear. With each move, each trial, each health scare, each heartache, faith over fear. If I could sum up our thirty years, I would say faith over fear has brought us this far.

We have found the pearl of great price and traded what the world says would make us happy for what God says would make us whole. You did not get me flowers on our anniversary. You rarely do. Unless you pick a bouquet from the wildflowers in our ravine or cut a branch of blossoms off one of our trees.

It’s so neat that our orchard blooms every year on our anniversary. Like God is giving us flowers in celebration of our love, but this year God did something even more spectacular. The flower representing thirty years of marriage is a lily. This is the name chosen for our second granddaughter born this week.

Do you see what I mean about miraculous? God planted little Lily for us in Lacy’s womb well before any of us knew the lily symbolized 30 years of wedded wonder. And it has been a wonder, these thirty years with you.

So I wanted to tell you, I don’t need real lilies, a string of pearls, or a grand anniversary trip. I just need Jesus and you. Happy Anniversary, babe.