I talk about me on this blog a lot. After all, it’s my blog so I’m allowed to do that. I’d like to talk about someone other than me today though. Actually, I’d like to talk about two somebodies other than me:

My parents.

(That picture was after I graduated undergrad in 2008. Yeah, we need an updated picture.)

When you work in student ministry and see students from all sorts of different families, you get a different perspective of your own family. I knew it before but I’ve come to realize even more that my parents are pretty awesome. We haven’t always gotten along and I wasn’t always the best son in the world (not that I am by any means now) but we never had the stereotypical period where I hated them or anything like that. For the most part, things have always been good between us.

My parents were never easy on me, but they weren’t completely hard on me either. I’ve described it before by saying that they always let me dig myself in a hole but I could always find them at the top of the hole telling me how to get out of it. They didn’t get me out of the hole but they gave me a solution so that I could get myself out of it. They have always given me their opinion but have never forced me to do anything one way or the other.

They let me make my own mistakes.

They let me find my own faith.

They even taught me how to cook. Sort of.

I could go on and on about my parents. About the years working with my dad doing real estate appraisals and the conversations we had in the car. About the time between 7th and 8th grade I sat on the back porch with my mom crying over a girl and getting her advice. Or the time my dad chased me and friends around the parking lot of Carowinds. Or the fact that my mom has been right about every single girl that I’ve ever dated. There are tons of stories and most of them are good. A lot of them are hysterical and super entertaining.

Yesterday my parents celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary.

I’m sure it hasn’t always been pretty. I know there have been hard times. There always are. But through it all they’ve stuck it out and are still together. In a world where many of my students come from homes with two sets of parents, I got the privilege of calling my parents and saying happy anniversary. That’s not something that I take for granted.

As I think about them and their 25 years together, there are two things that come to mind that I hope for:

1) Another 25 years of them together that are even better than the last 25. I hope to one day be able to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary in the only way that my parents would have it: at a steak house at the beach.

2) That me and Nicole can model the type of parents that they have been to me and my brother and sister to our future kids and that we raise them half as well as my parents raised us.

I say all of this to say one thing and one thing only:

Happy Anniversary and I love you both. Thank you for putting up with me for the last 24 years and for everything that you’ve ever taught me.

Oh, and just like my high school graduation cap said, don’t cry mom.