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April, 20 years ago on my last night as a single man, I lay in bed staring at the ceiling unable to sleep in the middle of the night. I was afraid you were making a huge mistake by marrying me — one for which I was largely to blame.
You were going to give me everything you had, including your future. You were going to say “Whatever happens to you, I’m going to be involved.” You were going to take all your chips, bet them on “Tom Hoopes,” roll the dice, and live with the consequences.
It seemed like a monumentally stupid thing for you to do.
I wrote a prayer that night and showed you the next morning. We were getting married on the feast of the Assumption, a day that celebrates how God’s grace filled Mary’s life, bringing glory out of sorrows. I told you we would say the prayer privately when we knelt before Our Lady of Guadalupe during the Ave Maria after Communion.
In that prayer, we told Our Lady that we were entirely unequal to the commitment we were making, that we had literally no resources capable of fulfilling our vows and that it would take divine intervention to keep the whole thing from going up in flames.
If it hadn’t been set it in a liturgical context, it would have seemed desperate and panicked. As it was, it just seemed overly pious. I guess in reality it was both.
Be careful what you pray for. Everything that I worried about as I lay awake that night happened. Here is our history in nine bullet points:
- I lost my job when you were expecting our first child and had to find odd jobs to support the family.
- You went into labor with our second child during your final Master’s comprehensive exams. You earned your degree at 2 p.m. and had the baby at 2 a.m.
- Our third is named after the coworker who provided us with a living wage by secretly having his salary reduced by $5,000 and mine increased by $5,000. At his funeral, we learned what he did.
- Our fourth, thank God, is still with us, after being dragged from a lake by a stranger whose name we still don’t know.
- Our fifth was named for his older brother who was miscarried.
- Our sixth was named for the suffering Pope without whom he and his brothers and sisters probably wouldn’t exist.
- Our seventh was named, in utero, for my mother, a few days before she died.
- Our eighth was born during the single most difficult week in both of our lives, when we saw the center of our life disappear.
- And our ninth — well, two months after he was born, you still haven’t recovered.
So, 20 years later, life has confirmed my worries. We have made bad decisions, we have been petty and self-seeking, we have fought, we have failed, and we have more than once wanted to give up on the whole thing.
I was right: Putting your whole life in my hands would have been stupid after all.
But that’s not exactly what happened, is it? The first thing you learn from the story of Mary’s life is that God, not Mary, is the protagonist of her story. We didn’t give each other our futures, we together gave our future to Christ, sacramentally. And God the Protagonist made wonderful things happen the only way he ever does: Through the cross.
The child who came when I was laid off did urban mission work this year. The one who interrupted your test now prepares dinner each night. The one named for the co-worker helped keep the house running the year I went back to school.
Last Sunday, all 11 of us ate and joked in the park, then scattered to swing, play catch, do a crossword and sleep on the grass in the shade. Watching the scene gave me that glow of happiness that has been our real story all along, despite the difficulties.
It also made me wonder where we will all be 20 years from now. Twenty years later, it seems like we’re still just starting out.
But I no longer lose sleep over it. God is God and we are his. We will be fine.
Tom Hoopes is writer in residence at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas.
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Dear Tom and April….
Happy Anniversary. What a beautiful tribute you wrote to your wife,Tom.It brought tears to my eyes reading it. You are a good man Tom.
In 20 years you will be holding many grandchildren.
I wish you both many blessings
Love, Janina
We can all write about the steps in our lives, but you have expressed it so clear, faith filled and with so much Love, I love that you say, “It seems like we’re just starting out” yes so much to learn, so much to grow, so much to share in GOD’S grace… You have lived a Beautiful full life, May THE LORD continue to Bless you and yours, Thank you for sharing in such beautiful, inspiring way… 37 years married and still growing, Love In Christ, Ken and Maria
That was absolutely heart-warming and beautiful. Thank you.
In 20 years, you will wake up every morning thanking God for another day with your beloved. You will still be grateful that He sent you to each other. You will love your wife with a love that is even stronger than it is today, or was when you first married. That is what God does for those who love Him and each other. Spoken from 22 years further out than you are now. God bless you both. Happy, happy anniversary.
Beautiful. Brought me to tears! We have friends whose children will be at Benedictine this fall, and I will encourage them to seek you out. You are a gifted writer, but also a great role model for our young people trying to seek God’s will in their lives. Thank you.
Thank you for sharing. It is true that we are all in God’s hands and what better place to be.
Wow. You and your wife are really blessed. Your faithfulness is inspiring.
Thank you for this. I love it. I haven’t seen much love in my life, and few good marriages. So thanks again.
Beautiful, that is the Tom I have grown to know and love. As I look back 20 years ago, I too was worried. My baby was getting married to a man with no job and she was just starting her Master’s program. It was hard enough to see her leave for the East Coast and she would be married to a man I didn’t know that well and had no job. Talk about scary. But it was clear April loved you and I had to rely on prayer to get me through. When I came out after the birth of your first child to help out, I was able to experience the interaction between you and April and besides you keeping me in stitches laughing I could see how much you complemented April’s personality and how the two of you worked together. I have never had any doubts after that experience. Certainly the beautiful bouquet of grandchildren you have both blessed us with (and shared with us) are priceless. God is good and faithful for sure. We love you all and wish you all the best for the next 20 years.
Thank you Tom for writing this piece on you and your marriage to your wife April. You place the emphasis on the right place - on God’s strenths and faithfulness and on our frailties, and on our need to place ourselves in a s sacramental relationship of God, and wife, and husband, in honesty and simplicity, and in keeping one’s marriage promises to God and to one another, and also to your children. I am amazed at your openness to life and to children. Your writing is a testimony to God’s covenantal faithfulness, and to the acceptance of the living Jesus into your life, and to your human frailities. When you also get a confirming message from your mother-in-law, that is also a confirmation that you are on the right track, the track of continuing to keep your marriage promises to God and to each other. My wife, Liz, and I, celebrated our 32nd anniversary this year on July 19, and your post today helped to strengthen my marriage committment. May you know that our living Jesus is using you uniquely today.
Wonderful story. Thanks for sharing. And love Grandma Sheila’s comment.
Happy Anniversary Tom and April. Such a beautiful letter! I am sure Fr. Swain is smiling in heaven over how faithful you two have been to each other and to God. I often sit at St. I’s and reflect about your wedding. RIght off the bat, your lives together began to be a source of many blessings for your friends. Keep up the good work. Praying for your family and especially April. Looking forward for an update in 20 more years to see how God has worked in your lives. Very inspiring.
Wow, this is most touching.
Tom and April, Happy Anniversary! Your story brought tears to my eyes, too. But what’s funny to me is that you’ve made it look so easy to the rest of us.
Thank you for this beautiful piece—we can surely relate! Happy Anniversary!
Thank you for sharing this.Lovely article & thankfully, not even one mention of things political.
:)
Happy anniversary, you guys!
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