# Choosing Presence Over Performance in Marriage and Friendship After ten years of marriage, Pastor Adam Mesa and his wife Ashley renewed their vows with phones put away. Their conversation is about celebrating well and knowing who is in your corner. Source: Pray.com — https://www.pray.com/articles/choosing-presence-over-performance-in-marriage-and-friendship Author: Adam Mesa Category: Love & Relationships Published: 2026-10-22 Last revised: 2026-10-22 --- ## Key takeaways - **Celebrate when things are going well.** A marriage does not have to nearly fall apart before it deserves a party. - **Attention is a gift.** A friend who changed his phone number for a week showed what it looks like to be present. - **Keep some moments for the people in the room.** Adam and Ashley asked their guests to stay off their phones and not to post. - **Rest in what God has done.** Adam explained Selah as a call to sit in a good moment instead of rushing to share it. - **Know who is in your corner.** Ashley asked whether the people around you would show up with or without a post. - **Social media is a tool.** It keeps you aware of people, but it does not replace direct contact. ## A tenth anniversary with the phones put away This episode of Beyond I Do begins with the couple just back from a week in Mexico. Pastor Adam Mesa and his wife Ashley had gone to celebrate ten years of marriage and renew their vows, joined by about 30 friends and family. Some were people they had mentored, and some were friends and accountability partners. At the big family table, they asked everyone to put their phones away unless a child was calling. Ashley described looking at Adam and saying, "this is family." She saw people who wanted to be in the room and who had a genuine heart for the two of them. Adam also asked about eight people, including couples they had walked with, to say a few words about the marriage. He said it encouraged them, a reminder that they are okay and that the hard work they put into their marriage was being seen. Ashley said it was a chance for the two of them to be present at their own celebration. Many couples, she suggested, barely remember their first wedding because everything moves so fast. ## Why they renewed their vows Adam was open about what the first wedding had been like. Two weeks before it, an affair in his immediate family came to light. Groomsmen were involved, and he found that friends had known and kept it from him. He said he lost most of his close friendships within about five months. After the wedding, the couple also found trust issues and baggage they had not seen while dating. At one point Adam quit his job, and his pastor, who is also his dad, refused the resignation. He said he paid for that first wedding by selling bags, cars and underwear, and that he liquidated his whole life to do it. This time the couple paid for the renewal themselves. The deposit had been for 80 guests, and 32 came. Adam and Ashley laughed about the shorter list, and Adam said that the people who have walked with you through every season make up a small group. Not everyone understood the idea at first. Adam said his dad thought it was a little silly, and others asked him why. After the dinner, his dad pulled him aside and said, "I wish every man could celebrate their wife like this." The grandparents, who were still alive, were in the photos, and the couple's two boys walked down the aisle and kept smiling the whole time. ## A gift of attention One compliment from the week stayed with Adam. A close friend, a successful real estate entrepreneur, was on his phone far less than Adam had ever seen. The friend explained that he had gotten a new phone and a new number, and forwarded calls from only a handful of people. He planned to forward everything once he got home. By Adam's telling, the friend said, "the gift I could give you is my attention." Adam said no tag or long Instagram post could compare. His friend knew his own weakness, since he works a lot and would step away if a call came during a wedding. He stepped into the week aware of it and made sure it would not become a distraction. Adam asked himself whether he had ever done something that thoughtful for someone. Adam also said that compliments are nice and that being appreciated is nice. What he warned against was chasing affirmation like a drug. He described the rush of likes and going viral, and why he lets his team handle the feedback on his platform. If you live for affirmation, he said, you will also live for the moments people withhold it. ## Celebrating without a crisis Adam spoke as a pastor who often marries couples with blended families or who have lived together for years. He said those weddings are beautiful, especially when the kids are old enough to remember them. But he did not want anyone to think a marriage needs a rescue story to be worth celebrating. He and Ashley waited until marriage to live together and started their family on purpose, and he said they had struggles too. He compared it to the person whose testimony is ordinary because they have always loved Jesus, and who sometimes feels they should have gone further into the world to have something dramatic to share. Adam's answer was plain: "I don't need anything to go wrong in my marriage for me to celebrate my marriage." He then said that more people should learn to celebrate when things are good. In his words, "maybe if you celebrated when things were going well more, then things would continue to go well more." He wants his sons to see consistency, a father who kept dating, loving and celebrating their mother. The couple added that a renewal does not have to be large. Adam renewed the vows of Nathan and Sanaz at five years in a simple ceremony with the two of them on a shared vacation. Two weeks before his own renewal, he met Darlene and her husband in his office for their 30th anniversary, prayed over their rings and anointed them with oil. ## Selah: resting in what God has done Adam explained three Hebrew words most people know. Hallelujah is a call to praise God for what was just said. Amen affirms that it is true. Selah, he said, means to let it rest and sit in it. He said many of us are good at hallelujah moments and amen moments but not at Selah. We are anxious, and our instinct is to post a good moment right away. In a Selah moment, he said, you do not touch your phone or think about the outside world. You rest in the enjoyment of what God has just done. For Adam and Ashley, that meant sitting with the fact that God had sustained them for ten years. Ashley added that couples could do this in simple ways, such as a getaway to a lake or a dinner with the friends and family who have brought them through. ## Who is really in your corner? Ashley asked a question for anyone reading. Would the people in your life champion you, cry with you and battle with you whether or not it was on social media? She said that counseling often turns up couples with no accountability, or friends who are not in a position to pray or fight for them. She felt grateful for the community around her, people who check in without waiting for a post. Adam added that social media is not social in the way it sounds. He said, "It has nothing to do with sociability." It keeps you aware of what is going on in people's lives, but contact, conversation and relationship are what keep you socialized. A heart or praying hands on a post, he said, can be "the vitamin c of a relationship, but that's not the meal." He also cited a figure that 60 percent of Gen Z use AI for life advice over a human, and said that is not healthy in the long run. Adam admitted he swings toward the opposite extreme too, rarely checking in on anyone, and said he has not figured out relationships. ## What this means for you You do not need a milestone, a crowd or a camera for a good moment to matter. Think of something good in your marriage, your family or your friendships that you have not yet celebrated, and plan a way to mark it with the people involved. You might also decide what to put away for an hour or a week. For one friend it was a phone number. For you it could be a phone at dinner, a habit of posting first, or the pull to compare. Ask yourself who would still be around if nobody saw it online, and spend more of your time with those people. Finally, try a Selah. The next time something good happens, thank God, say amen to the truth of it, and then sit quietly in it a little longer before you tell anyone.