By 2:00 this afternoon, Hiram and I will have been married for 36 years. Here are the top ten perks of our long partnership:

10.  We’ve both come to prefer water at meals. How easy is that?

9.   36 years later, he’s as handsome as he was when we met at the college freshman orientation dance in September of 1974.

8.   When we’re on vacation and he says, “Jolene, take a picture of __________________,” I now know we’ll both be happier if I hand over the camera so he can capture the essence of whatever he sees, and I don’t.

7.   We both agree Panera’s is the best place to stop for a quick meal on the road.

6.   He’s an eternal pessimist. I’m an eternal optimist. Somewhere between our two points of view, we usually find reality.

5.   He learned to love wilted lettuce. I learned to prepare and love his mom’s turkey hash. We agree both are delicious.

4.   He knows I don’t like tramping in the wild woods, I know he doesn’t like big crowds, and we’ve quit trying to change one another.

3.   Our shared memories of people and events are interpreted from differing points of view, but we’re learning to be happy to have memories to share.

2.   We agree that watching our children become the adults God created them to be has been the most rewarding, terrifying, satisfying, and fascinating work we’ve ever done.

1.   Shared faith brought us together, kept us together, and continues to mold us into the people we didn’t know we wanted to become when we wed on July 9, 1977.