This week we sat outside under the trees with three couples. The dinner included asparagus, potatoes, salmon, fresh fruit and homemade apple pie a la mode. There was even French chocolate as a post dessert delectable. But although it was delicious, scrumptious even, the part that I can still taste is the conversation. These couples are embedded so deeply into our marriage, to forget them would be like tearing out the hundred foot oak tree in my yard. Worse than that, actually, since I have only lived in this house for fourteen years and they have been our friends for forty. 

I made a toast, choking up just a smidgen, saying that the night was precious to me even before we walked in the door. To linger on a spring evening in their company felt like God's answer to questions that drag like sopping wet clothes when I try to run. I asked some of those questions, and felt safe. 

These are women I confided in while raising babies, couples we have camped with in the Laurel Mountains. We sang in harmony back in high school, and hugged each other's children. 

None of our marriages are picture perfect. In fact all of them have at times been messier than a subway stairs in Brooklyn. But having seen each other stumble and scrape bottom, we choose to rise up. They are living proof that there is life after failure.