Wedding Anniversary Poem and Prayer Card to Celebrate Your Marriage Anniversary | Connect with Your Spouse and God as Lifelong Friends

Anniversary Love Poem for Married Couples: A Simple Way to Pray, Think and Believe to Celebrate Your Wedding Anniversary...

How to Celebrate Your Wedding Anniversary, Remember Your Spouse and Make a Lasting, Strong Marriage Connected With God...Starting with Only Two Minutes A Day!

Make Your Marriage Even Better
Use Your Faith, Hope and Love to
-- Celebrate Staying Together for Life!

Dear Friend,

We live in crazy times. The headlines of newspapers and magazines, TV news and talk radio often point out how marriages and fidelity are on the decline. Divorce and separation plague more than every two in five first-time marriages. Without faithfulness in a marriage, the anxiety of what may happen in a marriage seems like it is too much to bear, sometimes.

My name is Dave Pipitone. I know there are many challenges that every marriage faces. My wife Cheryl and I have been married for more than 25 years. We discovered that what and how we think affects our marriage - for better or for worse. Fortunately, I discovered something to think and believe I would like to share with you.

What Were They Thinking? Why Didn't They Change Their Thoughts?

Look at the newspapers or watch TV. When you hear of a long-time married couple that breaks up, or the husband has an affair, or irreconciliable differences, you might ask, "Why?" or "How Could They?" Somewhere, somehow, thoughts and beliefs of the husband or wife or both affected their actions toward each other.

Many married couples may fear that everything is unraveling when communication breaks down in a marriage. Communication really begins in the mind, thinking positive thoughts about the marriage relationship. This can be really hard to do without having something to help you remember the promises made on your wedding day.

The truth is that you can take control of your marriage, choose thoughts that your marriage is getting better, that God is there to help you, and that you have the gifts to become best friends for life. Every day of your life.

The Christian hope is that God is the third strand, the third cord in every Christian marriage. Every human relationship. Jesus Christ blessed marriage during his earthly life. Jesus Christ rose from death to strengthen and be present in every marriage from the wedding vows to the end of physical life.

It's Not Your Fault, Unless You Choose to Think That Way

You see, our thoughts shape our lives. We repeat a thought over and over. It becomes a belief. We trust that belief and our beliefs guide our actions.

Now, the thing is, we did not choose every thought that we have. Many of our thoughts came from family and friends. Much of the time, they inherited their thoughts from their families and friends.

So, when we were infants and small children, we absorbed those thoughts. If we picked up thoughts that marriage was loving and good, we have positive thoughts. If we grew up during a divorce or bad marriage, we have negative thoughts about marriage.

This is where we need to take control of our thinking. Your marriage is what you make of it. And you need to take active steps every day to neutralize negative thoughts of the past and present to create a marriage that lasts.

When I realized this, my married life and understanding took on a whole new meaning.

Start with the Tapestry of Life. It Includes Dark and Light Stitches

When my wife and I were married in 1982, the priest gave a homily on our wedding day. He taught us that we were weaving the tapestry of life with God.

Every day is a new stitch. Every dark time and every bright time are the stitches woven into a lifetime: creating a beautiful portrait of love with God and each other.

There are many different colors of yarn in the tapestry. There are some times in life where the dark thread is stitched day after day – those periods when sad and difficult times when someone we love gets sick and their body dies.

Times of happiness and joy are bright patches. Like when we had our first child after many years of marriage. When we celebrated being together. Simple things like holding hands, giving and receiving cards, flowers and gifts. Being with each other as best friends.

Look at the beautiful picture on the front of any good tapestry. What do you see? The colors blend perfectly and all of the threads are neat and in place. Everything is perfect on the outside, right?

This is true of the friendship in your marriage. Many good times. Some trying times. Still a tapestry of beautiful moments, days and years. But it isn't always easy…

What is Behind the Stitches?

Until you look at the back of the tapestry and see threads crossing every which way, tied off, broken. Behind the scenes, you see all the work that went into making that beautiful picture.

The trust of each other when things seem to go wrong.
The belief that you have your spouse who makes mistakes.
The hope you have in your marriage to grow and become better during life.
The love that you have for your spouse when times get tough.

That is your marriage relationship. It hasn't happened overnight. It takes time to grow in love, faith and hope.

There is a lot of work behind the scenes that only you and God see to make your lovely picture of togetherness. It takes a new way to look at marriage and remember that God is the unbreakable strand in all of life. What is that new way to opens your mind to see and your heart to remember?

Prayer.

Why Is it So Hard to Pray During Marriage?

Why do most Christian couples who live together for many days or years, enjoy each other, eat and play together, have a hard time praying together for their marriages? We made a list of the most common reasons why prayer can seem to be so difficult. How many of these apply to you?

Take the following test. Check off the answers that give you the most problems when you think about praying with your spouse and feel stuck:

You don't have the right words.

You're angry at God about challenges in your marriage.

You're not sure what your spouse will think of you

You don't know what to say or ask God.

You don't know how to explain what prayer will do for you.

You don't know how share a simple, common understanding about what being married with God means.

You don't know what God wants to do for you and your marriage.

You aren't sure that God even knows or cares about you.

How did you do? Did you check off the statements that you find true? If you didn't check any boxes, you are amazing; we are so very blessed and happy for you.

If you struggle with any of these reasons, we have a very easy solution to help you pray in a simple and effective way. But before we show you that, I want to show you something.

A Tapestry of Hope in Our Home

In 1984, my wife and I moved to the Chicago, Illinois area when I found a job after being out of work for more than a year. My wife loved rainbows and penguins, collecting lots of stuffed penguins, pictures, T-shirts and clothes with rainbows on them.

One day in the fall of 1985, we visited a nursery and crafts store and I saw this magnificent long-stitch tapestry. It was a picture of penguins walking through a rainbow. I thought to myself, "Won't this make a great Christmas gift for my wife?" So I went back later and bought the package. I was going to give my wife a big surprise for Christmas.

But... I was the one that got the surprise! Right away! I learned that I had to stitch every thread and follow the pattern to create the tapestry. The package was a kit with a canvas, lots of threads and a pattern to follow. It was not a picture I could frame and hang on the wall. I actually had to stitch it myself.

Now, I am not very skilled at stitching. That may have come natural to many people but not to me. My grandma stitched many sweaters, footies and afghans. But I did not get that gift passed on to me. If you ever saw me thread a needle, you'd think I had ten left thumbs.

I kept stitching into the wrong place. I would have to retrace the threads and unstitch the wrong stitches. There were more than 6,000 stitches to complete in this tapestry. It seemed like it was taking forever.

And I had to hide what I was doing, too. I could not stitch at home in our apartment without my wife seeing what I was doing. That would ruin the surprise. I needed a different place to stitch.

That meant I would have to do the stitching somewhere else. And during lunch at work seemed to be the best time. I had to sit in the corner in my office so no one would see me, a man, doing a longstitch. I hid the canvas behind a shelving unit so others wouldn't find it. I almost gave up.

But I made the commitment to please my wife and I wanted to see the happiness on her face when she opened the present. So I kept going. It took a lot of time and a lot of stitches. I gathered momentum, got past the half-way mark, became better at stitching and I finally finished the last stitch on Christmas Eve, in time to wrap it up and give it to my wife.