Celebrate your Marriage with an Anniversary Timeline

An anniversary is a notable event which we often mark with a dinner out or a getaway for just the two of us. This year, why not do something different and celebrate with an Anniversary Timeline?

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What is an Anniversary Timeline?

There are many ways to celebrate your marriage. For instance, here is an article with lots of anniversary date ideas. In addition, here’s a short video about how to celebrate your spouse. But a timeline is another way to make your anniversary festive. An anniversary timeline is just a visual way to record important events in the order that they occured. So an anniversary timeline would record the significant events of your marriage.

We celebrated our fortieth wedding anniversary with a party in our backyard. Our daughter created the timeline in the photo above for the party. That’s one way to do an anniversary timeline but there are so many other examples. If you’re not very creative, Etsy has many artsy people who can help you with one that is tailored to your unique story. Here’s one, and here’s another. Oh, and make sure you check this one out.

The first time I made a timeline of my life was for a mission trip I was taking to Israel with a group of women. There were about forty women going, and to get to know one another, we each made a timeline of the major events in our lives and shared them.

The process was so interesting to me. I put a lot of thought into the project. What were the most significant events of my life? And what lessons did I learn in the process? The experience was challenging but so rewarding. Sharing my timeline with others and hearing about theirs was rewarding. I was hooked!

A timeline is an opportunity to reflect back on your life, think about where it’s taken you and what happened along the way. It can also provide clues as to where you are heading next.

Our Anniversary Timeline

A few years ago we joined a workshop at church and our assignment was to do a marriage timeline. The milestones we included were our wedding, the births of our kids, our move to Europe, and, the most important turning point in our lives when we each made personal commitments to follow Christ. We also included the lowest point of my life, the loss of my dad to suicide, which significantly impacted our marriage and our spiritual growth. Finally, we noted the marriages of our kids, birth of our grandkids, our move to a new church, volunteering as marriage mentors, and finally, the publication of our books.

Before we shared our timeline, the couples around our table prayed, asking the Holy Spirit to reveal patterns and insights that they could share with us. We began to tell our story, and each of the couples listened with the heart of God. Following that, they all took turns letting us know what God put on their hearts about our story. Some of their messages were words of encouragement, some were new insights for us. The experience was inspiring and enlightening.

Now it’s Your Turn to Create your Anniversary Timeline

We have a simple timeline template you can download and get started on your anniversary timeline. If you’re like me, you’ll need to print about 10 of them so you can play around with the events and timing.

But before you start, pray and ask God to reveal the moments He would consider significant. Thinking back on my life, some of the most momentous occasions weren’t associated with an anniversary or any big celebration. Along with the typical big events of your life, you might want to include some of these “it just so happened” moments.

For instance, the moment I decided to receive Jesus as my savior happened as I was driving home from Bible study one day. I felt a strong compulsion to pull my car over on the side of the road. There was an urgency and couldn’t wait until I got home. So there, on the side of the road, looking out at a beautiful forest, I asked Jesus to be my savior.

You don’t have to wait for your Anniversary to do a Timeline

Doing an anniversary timeline is a fun way to celebrate your anniversary, but any time is good for reflection and contemplation about where you’ve been and what you’ve learned in life. You might choose to do one when you become empty nesters, or at retirement. Or even when you feel stuck or burned out by life. God is contemplative, and he’d love to contemplate your marriage or your life with you.

The Bible is full of encouragements for us to remember and ponder the events of our lives. In fact, the word remember is used 235 times in the Old Testament. Here’s one of them.

Remember every road that God led you on for those forty years in the wilderness, pushing you to your limits, testing you so that he would know what you were made of, whether you would keep his commandments or not.

Deuteronomy 8:2 MSG

Do you have someone to share your anniversary timeline with? Is there another couple you can trust with your story? If your church doesn’t have a marriage mentoring ministry, your pastor may be able to refer you to a godly couple who could walk through your story with you. We really believe that your story isn’t complete until you tell the story.