We were married when we were kids, really. I was just past my 19th birthday, and answered a nervous, “Uh huh,” to the minister’s questions. And at the end of the ceremony my new husband took me in his arms and kissed me with a fierce joy, the same fierce joy he kissed me with every day until the day he died, 36 years later.

Our marriage was by no means perfect: we had plenty of arguments and disagreements and problems in our marriage – arguments about sex, money, bills, kids and relatives, long periods of time our jobs kept us apart from each other, things we did that embarrassed each other.

But each day was a new day.

The commitment we made on our wedding day wasn’t a one-time commitment, made to slide us through the rest of our lives. That kind of commitment slides to a stop sooner or later. No, we renewed our commitment each day.

“I love you,” he would say in the morning when he kissed me good-bye. “I love you,” I would say in the evening as we went to bed. And if we got into a fight, we would yell and scream, and if one of us would try to storm out, the other would run after and not let them go. We were passionate as the teenagers who fell in love with each other.

Like I learned in my marriage, a commitment is not something you do once, and hope it stays alive. A commitment is something to be renewed and tended each day, like the beautiful garden it is, in which all the joys of life can grow.

By: Catherine Weaver

Catherine Weaver is a children’s fantasy author from the San Francisco Bay Area. She is an educator and a mother and grandma who loves her grandkids, silly jokes, and the beauty of the world around her. Find her on Facebook, Twitter. or on her blog.