Over the years I have attended quite a few receptions and parties celebrating long marriages. I’ve been asked to deliver invocations, benedictions, and table prayers at 50th and 60th wedding anniversaries. I’ve attended a lot of open houses for church members celebrating significant marriage milestones. One of the things that is common at such occasions is someone asking the couple about their secret to a successful marriage. Sometimes one of the marriage partners offers their version of the story of a long and successful marriage.

I’ve been thinking about this a little bit as Susan and I think and talk about how we want to celebrate 50 years of marriage. Our 50th wedding anniversary will be next June, interestingly a day before the 50th anniversary of our daughter’s in-laws. We were married on a Friday and they were married the next day. We know that we’d like to have some kind of a gathering of friends and family. It would be nice to repeat our marriage vows at church. We’d love to have family pictures taken that include our children and grandchildren and new pictures of each family group.

However, I’m not inclined to have the traditional reception where we are called to speak to the gathered crowd about the secret to a successful relationship. The main reason is that I don’t know the secret.

I know I have been blessed with a wonderful life partner. I know I feel incredibly lucky to have met Susan when I was young. I know that we are fortunate to have been able to share our careers as well as our family life. I know that our children have been healthy and happy and have made some very good decisions in their lives. But I am at a loss to explain why we have had such a fortunate life while others have suffered tragedy and have had different experiences.

My mother was widowed before her 40th wedding anniversary, but I don’t think that we are somehow better at marriage than my parents. I haven’t lived longer than my father did because of having made better choices.

I’ve known couples whose marriages have ended in divorce who were intelligent, capable, complex thinkers who made good choices and yet somehow still ended up in a situation where divorce was the best choice for them.

Of course there have been trials in our marriage. We have struggled at times. We have worked through problems. There have been hurt feelings and a few decisions in which a better process would have been preferable. We have walked through grief together. We faced a nearly fatal health crisis. Part of the success of our relationship is our mutual commitment to working through challenges.

I think I would prefer not to make any speeches about what makes for a successful marriage. I’d prefer to simply express my gratitude for having been fortunate in love and blessed by a wonderfully loving and supportive partner.

If anything, my experiences in life have led me to believe that teenagers are capable of making good decisions. I was 16 when I first dated Susan. I had been 20 for only a week when we married. The decision to marry was a teenage decision for me and it is one that I do not regret. I made some other fairly complex decisions in my teen years of which I am pleased. As a parent, I have witnessed our children making good decisions in their teen years as well.

The popular notion seems to be that teenage brains are not fully developed, that teens are in the midst of powerful hormones and new experiences of dopamine and that they lack impulse control. I’m not saying that these things aren’t true. I do think, however, that a case can be made that adolescents are capable of accurate risk assessment and complex decision making.

Ivy Defoe, professor of child development and education at the University of Amsterdam recently published a paper reviewing scientific studies of adolescent risk-taking. The paper argues that adolescents are more likely to choose safe options than younger children. Defoe cites laboratory experiments examining the cognitive processes of risk appraisal. In one experiment adolescents were consistently more likely to chose a smaller guaranteed payout than to accept a 50% chance of a higher reward or a total loss. Younger children were more prone to risk the guaranteed income.

The fact that teens often make poor decisions comes from the fact that they are often in situations where there are many more opportunities to make decisions. We control all kinds of risks for young children. We don’t give them the option of crossing a parking lot without supervision. We don’t allow them to try illegal substances. We make decisions for them. As children grow into adolescence, the range of choices opens up dramatically. Within a span of very few years they go from a very protected environment to many situations that are risk-conducive. They learn to drive and gain independence. They become sexually mature and open to relationship risks. They are exposed to addictive substances in settings without adult supervision. Their newfound freedom brings newfound risks.

I don’t think that we should be surprised that adolescents make poor choices on occasion. The risks of the transition into adulthood are real. However, I think that we sometimes fail to celebrate the good choices that teens make. I know that as a parent it is really difficult to allow your children to make decisions in which the risk is real. I understand the desire to protect them from making bd choices. But I also know that they need to experience freedom in order to mature into functioning adults. I know that they need to have real choices with real consequences in order to learn.

When officiating at weddings I often comment to the parents of the couple that “there are times when we parents need to step back and allow our children to take steps on their own, trusting in the love that we have given them.”

In my own case, I’m very grateful that I was allowed to make the decision to marry at a young age. It has proven to be the right choice.