As our 10th wedding anniversary approached, my wife, Theresa, and I hatched a plan to celebrate. We would ask my parents and brothers to watch our four young kids—ages 2 through 8—so we could get away for two nights to somewhere we could hike, bike, and eat good food. We settled on the lovely town of Sheboygan, Wisconsin and found a weekend that worked for my family to babysit.
This may sound like a relatively simple getaway, but I can count on one hand the number of times we have spent even a single night together away from our kids in the last eight years of parenting. By our standards, this was a big escape and a much-needed time to relax and recharge.
The plan was to leave Sunday morning and come home Tuesday afternoon. The kids hadn’t started the new school year yet and neither had my high school-teacher brothers, who had drawn up an itinerary of fun adventures to entertain our brood while we were gone.
But my 4-year-old son Sam woke up with a fever the night before we were set to leave. We decided to postpone our departure until the afternoon, in case he miraculously recovered, and it seemed he had. By the next day, the fever had dissipated, his energy levels had risen, and he ran out of the house to greet my brothers in the driveway when they came to pick up the kids for dinner.
Theresa and I tentatively loaded the car, instructing our babysitters to call us immediately if Sam seemed to be deteriorating or if there were any other reasons for us to cancel the trip. Everyone agreed that all seemed well, so we got in our Honda Civic—the car that had taken us on so many party-of-two adventures before we had kids—and headed due north, blasting the “Theresa’s Favorites” Spotify playlist I had hastily created that morning.
The first leg of the journey was a stop for dinner in Milwaukee before reaching our final destination of Sheboygan. It was a perfect summer evening, and we found an appealing-looking restaurant with seating on the riverfront.
“Let’s pretend we don’t have kids on this trip,” joked Theresa, hoping we could steer our conversations beyond the usual day-to-day issues.
“Sam who?” I said, playing along as I dove into the tantalizing barbecue shrimp appetizer.
Theresa’s phone buzzed on the table. The caller ID said “Ghee,” my kids’ nickname for my mom.
“Hi, Theresa, I’m sorry, but Sam just threw up all over our minivan,” my mom said after Theresa answered the phone.
Sam who? Nice try.
I’m not sharing this story to elicit any pity. Yes, we were extremely disappointed, and it was a much less joyful ride back from Milwaukee to Chicago. (RIP, bone-in ribeye I had ordered.)
“Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person’s ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.” C. S. Lewis
But once the bags were unpacked, the minivan sanitized, and Sam was on the road to recovery, I realized this experience was perhaps the perfect celebration of our 10th anniversary, as it inadvertently illustrated one of the many aspects of family life: setting aside our own desires to support and care for our children and each other. Even after a decade, this lesson on family love and sacrifice remains both a tremendous blessing in my life and a daily cross I struggle to bear at times.
I remember coming across what would become my favorite C. S. Lewis quote: “Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person’s ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.” This quote formed my heart to contemplate the kind of love I would eventually pledge forever to Theresa and later offer to my children. Lewis’ words are precise and exacting, an antidote to the temptation to treat relationships as disposable.
When you are seeking your family’s ultimate good “as far as it can be obtained,” you are obviously talking about doing whatever you can to help your family know Jesus—and that raises the stakes considerably. It means we mere broken creatures must try to reflect the perfect love Christ has for each one of us.
In marriage and family life, this kind of love lays a path to a deeper relationship with Christ brick by brick in our daily actions and interactions. Love like this isn’t built in big, flashy ways that are baked into the words of marital vows—sickness, health, richer, poorer (like Theresa supporting me when I went through successful treatment for Hodgkin’s lymphoma just four months into our marriage). The quiet acts you sometimes don’t even recognize in the moment also build this selfless form of love.
When the toddler is screaming in his room, this love gets you out of bed at 4 a.m. while you let your spouse stay asleep. It motivates you to change wet sheets in the top bunk bed when your back already hurts. It’s the restraint not to say the thing you know will trigger your partner’s wrath. It’s the commitment to take your entire family to Mass every Sunday—rain or shine, smiles or tears—and to teach your children that God loves them. It’s the patience with yourself and your spouse when you inevitably fall short of offering this kind of love to each other.
After 10 years of marriage, Theresa’s and my “steady wish” for each other and our family remains at the foundation of our relationship. When we are loving properly, it calls us out of ourselves and back to our purpose (and even back from our trip to Sheboygan). It unites us in times of hardship and gives meaning to our joy. It offers us an earthly glimpse of the love that surpasses all understanding.
This article also appears in the January 2025 issue of U.S. Catholic (Vol. 90, No. 1, pages 43-44). Click here to subscribe to the magazine.
Image: Pexels/Vika Glitter
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