I have always been fascinated by wedding vows.
There is something deeply moving about watching a couple stand before a priest or pastor, look into each other’s eyes and promise to remain together “in sickness and in health, in riches or poverty, till death do us part.”
The words are familiar to almost everyone who has attended a wedding. For some people, however, they are little more than beautiful words spoken because that is what is expected during a wedding ceremony.
But for others, those words are a covenant. They are a promise that says, I will not only love you when life is beautiful. I will love you when life becomes difficult.
It is easy to promise forever when everything is going well. It is much harder to live out forever when sickness comes, when finances become difficult, when dreams are interrupted or when the person you married can no longer be the person you once knew.
That is when vows stop being words and become a test of love, and the story of Devonte and his wife, Qieana, is a remarkable example of what those vows can mean.
When Life Changed in an Instant
Devonte and Qieana were living their lives as many young couples do. They had hopes, plans, and dreams for their future.
But sometimes life can change in a matter of seconds. While riding in a cab, the couple was involved in a devastating car accident.
Qieana suffered a severe traumatic brain injury that dramatically changed her life. The woman Devonte had married could no longer speak normally or care for herself as she once had.
Suddenly, their marriage entered a chapter neither of them had planned for. The future they had imagined had been interrupted.
And this is where the meaning of their wedding vows became real because it is one thing to say “in sickness and in health” while standing in a wedding ceremony. It is another thing to live those words when sickness actually arrives.
Love When the Person You Love Needs You Most
Devonte could have allowed the situation to overwhelm him. He could have concluded that the responsibility was simply too much.
He could have left much of her care to medical professionals and continued with his own life. Instead, he chose to stay.
He became deeply involved in Qieana’s care and rehabilitation, supporting her through the long and difficult process of recovery.
He stayed beside her in the hospital, remained involved when she returned home and helped her work through the basic functions that had become difficult after the injury.
And he celebrated the smallest improvements because, in their circumstances, the smallest improvements were enormous victories.
That is something about love that we sometimes forget. Love is not always dramatic.
Sometimes love looks like sitting beside a hospital bed, helping someone eat, repeating the same exercise again and again.
It means encouraging someone who cannot yet see the progress you can see, and sometimes love means simply refusing to leave.
Two Hundred Days of Silence
Then came a moment that touched millions of people. After approximately 200 days without speaking, Qieana finally began to find her voice again.
Devonte captured one of those precious moments on video. He gently asked her whether she loved him.
It was not an elaborate conversation. She struggled, but eventually, she managed to respond with a simple “Yay.”
Devonte then asked whether she hated him again. She struggled before answering: “No.” To someone watching from the outside, those might appear to be tiny words.
But to Devonte, they represented something enormous. After months of silence, his wife was speaking again. There was a moment of hope.
Sometimes we wait for miracles to arrive looking spectacular, but perhaps some miracles arrive as a single word.
When the Vows Become Real
Perhaps the wedding ceremony is actually the easiest part. You are dressed beautifully. Family and friends are watching, and everyone is celebrating.
There is music, photographs and excitement about the future, and then the ceremony ends. The guests go home.
The flowers eventually disappear. The wedding clothes are packed away, and the photographs become memories.
And marriage begins. That is when the vows become real. When the bills arrive, the children come, disagreements happen, someone gets sick.
When life doesn’t look anything like the life you imagined. That is when a couple discovers whether their vows were merely words or whether they truly meant them.
Very few people can know exactly how they would respond to a situation as difficult as the one Devonte and Qieana faced until they actually experience it.
But their story gives married couples something worth thinking about. We often enter marriage because we love the person as they are at that particular moment.
But marriage asks us to make a much bigger commitment: Will you continue to love this person as life changes them?
Devonte and Qieana poses for the camera
The beautiful young person you marry will grow older. A healthy person you marry may become sick, and a strong person you marry may one day need your strength.
And one day, you may need theirs. This is why Christian marriage is not simply about romance.
It is about covenant, sacrifice, patience and choosing each other repeatedly. The wedding may happen once.
The photographs may be taken once. The celebration may last only a few hours, but the vows are supposed to follow the couple into every season of life.
Perhaps this is why Jesus’ command to love is so profound. Love is not proven when loving is easy. Love is revealed when loving becomes costly.
Devonte’s story reminds us that sometimes the greatest declaration of love is not saying “I love you.”
Sometimes it is staying, serving and holding someone’s hand when they cannot hold yours, because when two people stand before God and say, “Till death do us part,” they are not merely promising to enjoy life together.
They are promising to walk through life together, and perhaps the question every married couple should occasionally ask themselves is: When the wedding vows are tested by the storms of life, will our love still be strong enough to say, “I am still here”?
