Sunday, September 8, 2013

Marriage Matters





 neckline

I was thinking this morning as I was cutting cantaloupe.  (I love cantaloupe.)  I was thinking about marriage.  When's the last time you heard a little kid playing on the playground holler that he wants to be a super duper awesome…. Husband?  Yeah, I've never heard that, and you know how much time I spend with kids.  Now, I haven't read Piper on marriage or Real Marriage by Driscoll or any of that.  Sheesh, I'm not even married, but it seems to me as an innocent bystander to the institution of marriage, IT'S PRETTY FLIPPING IMPORTANT.

Let's not even pull out the big guns yet.  Let's just talk about romance.  Choosing to stick with someone til death do you part, forsaking all others and toughing it out through sickness and health, feast and famine, laundry and dishes - now that's romantic.  Shakespeare didn't write Sonnet 116 because we're supposed to just date people forever.

it is an ever-fixed mark 
That looks on tempests and is never shaken...
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, 
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.


Do we love fairytales because the prince rescues the princess from the dragon/villain/evil step-whoever/magic spell and takes her out to dinner?  NO!  We love it because they ride off into the sunset (however she manages that in her poofy princess dress), and they live happily ever after.  They don't live happily ever after because that was the last of the dragons or because the princess never burns the toast or because the prince never ever tracks mud into the palace.  They live happily ever after because they're together, they're committed, they're in for the long haul.


What about kids?  Think it's better if they have two married parents living at home?  Think it's better if they can enter adulthood without 12 suitcases of relational baggage from a divorce or a dysfunctional unmarried parents scenario?  Now, I get it.  Stuff happens.  People make the best out of the situations they have, but we're talking ideal situations here.  Practically speaking, it's just easier.  Coordinating who goes to whose house and who picks up whom when and for what holiday and who pays for gymnastics and baseball...  I had a student last year who switched houses EVERY DAY.  Let's just say she had a hard time keeping track of her homework. 

OK, big gun time.  Marriage is a picture of Christ and His Church.  God set it up as a sort of earthly analogy of the closeness we experience with Christ and the kind of sacrificial love that exists between Christ and His Church.  What do you think it says about the Church when our divorce rate is the same as everyone else's?  What are you saying about Christ with your marriage?  It's not just this thing that started out romantically, ended up with a few kids and a mortgage and is now this habit you'll probably maintain for a while. 

*brief hiatus for frustrated explosion*

MARRIAGE IS HARD.  I get it.  Life is easier if you just date people or cheat on people for other people or remain the eternal bachelor because you love drinking out of the milk jug.  Sometimes you lose sight of Ephesians 5 - "walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us… a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife… let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband."  That's HARD.  It's natural to love yourself the most and hand out your leftovers to whoever's standing closest.  Loving someone as yourself is a supernatural crazy kind of love.  It's easy to lose the vision of marriage somewhere between making dinner and golf with the guy.  You get busy choosing paint colors for the living room or buying socks for the kids or doing dishes or figuring out where you're going to spend Christmas. 

But what if, aside from you walking with Jesus, your marriage is the most important thing you ever do?  Oh sure, your career is important.  Making that quota is of real long term value.  *Here's a tissue for my sarcasm splatter.*  Being on that non-profit committee is so great.  You racking up hours at the gym is super duper self-discipline.  I get it, we need to do stuff with our lives.  Big stuff.  Little stuff.  Middle stuff.  But shouldn't looking like Jesus and loving like Jesus be our first and main thing?  I'm not saying you can't love Jesus and be Committee Chairperson Extraordinaire, but if you think that takes precedent over your marriage because it's obviously more charitable and philanthropic, you've lost the vision of marriage. 

Sure, I'm not married, so for me, looking like and loving like Jesus is not going to look like nurturing a marriage.  (Sometimes I get frustrated because I'm not sure how to properly affirm and uphold the institution of marriage while simultaneously affirming the role of single people in the Church.)  But good heavens, married people, your marriages are important - not just because it's cheaper to be married or because it means you have someone to go to the movies with.  They're important because you're the picture people see of Christ and the Church!  I almost feel like buying some pompoms and being your personal cheer squad.  In no other relationship will you have the opportunity to show off God's grace and patience quite like the way you do in marriage. 

What would have to change for us to start hearing the veneration of marriage on the playground?  Married people, I think it starts with you.  You have to start believing your marriages matter, that the promise you made that day you walked down an aisle is STILL the most important promise you've ever made.  It's not just important to you.  It's important to culture, social norms, the Church, kids, single people, the economy.  We have to start talking about marriage like it's a good thing - not a rut, not a habit, not something to try when you hit 30 - but a good thing that's good for people.    

i love seeing old married couples holding hands-keeping the romance alive<3

Do you get it yet?  Geez louise, I sure hope so.  Know that I'm on my knees for you and in your corner, but not even a fraction of the way Jesus is interceding for you. 

Go be awesome and married,


Little Miss Sunshine

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