My in-laws will celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary this weekend. This is such an achievement… Forty years together seems a concept so foreign and strange for me, coming from a “broken home” environment myself (I never met my father).
They don’t really want a present, but I thought I’d make them a scrapbook page with lots of old photos that would remind them of these last 40 years together. So I managed to get hold of tons of their old pictures. And something that I love doing is looking at old pictures! So this was a present for me too 
I still haven’t started the scrapbook page, but I’ve got a very good idea of what I am going to do. (News on this will come soon on my crafty blog)
The thing is, by looking at those old pictures an idea came to my mind. I suddenly wished that we were in the 70s or 80s again. Families seemed to be closer together, children were children (meaning that they would be “naughty” sometimes, but they would never even think about doing some of the barbarities that children do nowadays – my husband was telling me the other night about this 4 year old who is terrorising and vandalising this lady’s car, and the mother of the child just laughs it off by saying “he’s such a devil, isn’t he?“). Family time wasn’t something that you had to make time for, but it was just the natural thing.
Of course I am generalising, and not all families were like that in the past. There’s always been broken families, disruptive children and abusive parents, but those were the exceptions and not the norm. Nowadays it is quite rare to find a married couple who has been together for more than 20 years and still love each other. It happens, I know, but in this case this is the exception and not the norm.
The way that society has evolved has made it too easy to just break up and not stick together. Which in a way it’s a great thing (I hate how women in the old days had to stick with abusive husbands just because you couldn’t even think of leaving him, let alone getting divorced!), but it is also creating a way of thinking where giving up is not frowned upon any more. And people won’t even think twice to leave what could be a very good relationship at the first sight of trouble. It looks like communication isn’t there any more, and rather than talk things over, leaving your couple is the easy thing to do. What a shame.
So I wish my in-laws many more years of blessed and happy marriage, 40 is just the beginning! They are definitely a role model to follow. They love each other, they love their children and all their family. And this will continue to be so for many years to come!
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