“Since the day we said our vows, our goal has been to walk worthy of the Lord and to keep on walking until we see his face” (Bernice Callaway).

Is that your goal in marriage? It sure is ours! Since the day we committed our lives to Christ, it’s been our goal not to deny God anything. We continually strive to give our all to Him and our lives have been all the richer for it.

We continually pray that when others see us, they will see Christ IN us and will want to know our God better —that we won’t distort the message of the love of Christ through how we live our lives. We also pray we will always live faithful and fully committed to our God and to each other for the rest of our lives. May God help us in this mission, and may this is your mission as well!

This week we want to share with you a true testimony from the lives of two ordinary people who lived in extraordinary faithfulness to the marriage commitment they made to each other over half a decade before. The full article is titled “57 Years in 5 Simple Steps” and was featured in Marriage Partnership Magazine several years ago.

In this article, Phil Callaway had asked his parents to give him “5 good reasons” why they were still together. What his mom wrote was simple and yet has sure has inspired us in our marriage. We hope it will inspire you as well.

The following is a “brief summary” of Phil’s parents’ marital experience: “‘Five reasons We’re Still Together’ by Victor and Bernice Callaway.

1. “EXAMPLE: When we were married, we hardly knew about divorce. I guess everyone at our wedding, including us, fully expected the knot to stay tied. We watched their marriages. We had seen their faithfulness. We would stay faithful too. We realize you won’t have that advantage. Some of your closest friends may pack it in. But no matter how dark the road gets, you will find examples of faithfulness. AND WHEN YOU CAN’T FIND EXAMPLES, YOU CAN STILL BE ONE.

2. “COMMITMENT: Sometimes I felt like walking out on Dad. And a few times I did. Early in our marriage I occasionally took long walks to get away from him. But I always returned to his loving arms. We made a pledge before God that we would stay committed to each other for life.

3. “DEVOTIONS: Through reading God’s Word and praying together almost every night, we learned what God planned and expected for our marriage. We memorized verses that encouraged us to be loving, kind and honest and to keep on forgiving. We asked God for guidance and He provided it. We prayed for children and embraced each one as gifts from God.

4. “TOGETHERNESS: As a Christian family we stuck together, warts and all. Though we often failed, we’re learning to admit wrong and ask for forgiveness. We laughed lots. We cried lots. We talked lots. We worked together and we played together.

5. “GOALS: Since the day we said our vows, our goal has been to walk worthy of the Lord and to keep on walking until we see his face. Sometimes we’ve fallen flat on our faces. But when that happened, we’ve been given grace to get up and claim God’s promise: ‘My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest’ (Exodus 33:14).

“Aging brings with it a whole new challenge. It’s no flat plateau; sometimes the hills seem steeper and the cliffs more precarious, but we’re learning to trust God for what’s ahead and to thank him for the abundant and undeserved mercies of the past.

“Not long after I read my mom’s note, someone informed me that another of my wedding day videos (that he tapes on various weekends) had become obsolete. I thought about my parents standing at the altar on a day when the temperature dipped to 45 below in Toronto. They knew that 10 days later Dad would go back to war, leaving his tearful bride waving from a train station platform. So they joined hands and promised to be faithful. They had no idea that their first child would die in their arms or that they would spend their entire lives below the poverty line. But they vowed to comfort each other, no matter what came their way.

“By today’s standards Mom and Dad didn’t have much… just $75, a solitary wedding ring and a suitcase full of dreams. More than half a century later, they still don’t have much. But their dreams were never about good fortune. Instead they dreamed of children who would follow God — and they got five of them. They dreamed of years of faithfulness — and they got more than 57 years of them. You can travel the world, but I’ll guarantee you one thing: you’ll never meet two wealthier people.”

It’s our prayer that we’ll be able to pass onto our children a love story such as this married couple did. What a precious inheritance! And it is our hope that you’ll also be able to live out a wonderful love story for all who are in your life to witness. As we’ve heard it said before, “It’s not how you start the race that’s as important as how you finish.” If you have issues to work through, lean into learning how to do this with the wisdom and strength God can give you.

We hope that if your love story falls short of that which the Lord longs for you to demonstrate, you’ll take to heart and live out what we’re told in the Bible,

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart” (Hebrews 12:1-3).

Steve and Cindy Wright