12 September 2025

We were married forty-five years ago today! Although one might say, ‘It seems like yesterday!’ I have to draw the line at that. The memories are still fresh and alive but so much has happened in the intervening years that I cannot compact them into a day!

Our marriage was fruitful. We had four children and were blessed to have them. They didn’t come fully formed. Much work needed to be done to nurture appropriate growth through childhood, adolescence and adulthood. One is in her thirties, three are in their forties.

We lived as a family in four manses in four interesting locations – Forth, Stirling, Bearsden and East Linton. For six months, we lived in the Victorian manse in Forth and in East Linton we lived in a Georgian manse but for the rest, they were all post-sixties houses. One was brand new!

Forth was a village for families. Children were prioritised and we benefitted from it. Stirling allowed the children to walk freely into town. Bearsden opened them up to the city and by the time we lived in the seventeen-roomed manse in Traprain, we were largely on our own!

The flower associated with a forty-fifth wedding anniversary is the iris. It is a beautiful flower which I often saw as a child growing in marshy ground rather than in the garden. It morphed into a Christian symbol, the fleur-de-lis, associated with the holy couple, the Trinity and the Christian virtues, faith, hope and love.

The word ‘iris’ derives from the Latin or Greek for ‘rainbow’. We see it in our adjective iridescent. In the Bible, God’s love is described in rainbow terms as ‘multi-coloured’. An iridescent love  has room for all the colours of the rainbow. Our love was born out of our Christian faith and embraced by God’s iridescence!