Steve and Molly McCoy Offer Their Take On Marriage After 20 Years

Some people are addicted to the way marriage, or significant other, makes them feel. When those feelings change most often the scrutiny begins with an examination of the partner. Which, ironically, is a me-first move. How? When I look at my spouse for the reason things have changed I am protecting myself against how I may have changed. The truth is we all change.

Steve and Molly McCoy sat down and extemporaneously crafted a reflection on their twenty years of marriage. If young couples would read something like this before saying “I do,” they may be disabused of the wildly erratic experience that results when we confuse romance with love. Could married longer, like Steve and Molly, would do well to regularly read a story like this as a reminder that we are always growing, always learning, and always experiencing the breadth of love that comports with aging.

Here are some samples of the McCoy’s reflections I hope will spur you to click over and read the entire piece for yourself.

The Wedding Vows | Twenty Years Later

What I offer below isn’t some well crafted, well edited article. It’s my anniversary morning thoughts, unplanned beyond the time it took to write it. We talked as I wrote, and this post accurately relays how we feel. This is what 20 years of marriage vows have meant to us, though we could obviously say much more. And we hope to convey that we aren’t complaining. We can’t talk about the vows without mentioning the hard part of the vows. It’s not pretty or easy, but it’s good.

1. To Have and To Hold from This Day Forward

Having and holding each other felt pretty doggone good 20 years ago. I remember as a young unmarried man thinking of how amazing it would be to be married one day and holding a woman who loves me at any moment of any day that I’d like to hold her. And now 20 years later we hold each other less often than we did, but still a lot. Some days, right in the middle of the day, we will go lay in the bed for a bit and hold each other and talk about whatever. It still is a joy, though we find ourselves thinking of something that needs to get done and move on.

2. For Better for Worse

I had no idea what “worse” would look like in marriage. We were both naive. We thought we took the high and happy road by being fully committed to covenantal love for one another, and that would lead to a ton of better and little worse. Experiencially, it didn’t. Though we’ve never even discussed divorce since we see it as a non-option, it doesn’t take the breaking of a marriage apart for a married couple to be broken. Still God, through giving us one another, makes those “worse” time, as bad as they are, really a “better” time because He is there with us, and we are there with each other.

3. For Richer or Poorer

But 20 years of marriage has taught us that a bigger house doesn’t make for a happy home. A nicer car often means a bigger car payment which we don’t have. We aren’t living for retirement, because we realize real rest is coming on That Day. Sure, we’d like a new BMW or Suburban to drive. Really we would. But being married and having four amazing kids and keeping things simple is a kind of riches to us.

4. In Sickness and In Health

Sick times have only begun. Our 20 years of marriage have us both about the age of 40, which is still young. We don’t feel that young. Times get so bad that Molly will look at me and say, “I sure wish Jesus would hurry up and come back.” She means it. And yet being married in sickness and health means we hold each others’ hand while waking up another day and working hard for each other, for our kids, and for the sake of the world hearing the gospel. What a joy to have all this pain and endure it together as husband and wife for all this time.

5. To Love and To Cherish

Now, 20 years later, love is so much better though at first it doesn’t feel like it is. Love early on was all over the place. It was public displays of affection and big toothy grins in photographs. It was weekend trips and events and discovery of wonderful life stuff. We got to explore the world we inhabited and the pleasures of marriage together, and it was exciting. It hasn’t stayed quite that way.

6. Until Death Do Us Part

I love you, Molly. Keep walking with me in these broken bodies and with these selfish struggles with sin, hold my hand, and let’s stay on this narrow path to something far better than what has been so amazingly good.

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About the Author
Husband to Patty. Daddy to Kimberly and Tommie. Grandpa Doc to Cohen, Max, Fox, and Marlee. Pastor to Snow Hill Baptist Church. Graduate of Oklahoma Baptist University and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Reading. Photography. Golf. Colorado. Jeeping. Friend. The views and opinions expressed here are my own and should not be construed as representing the corporate views of the church I pastor.

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