My wife and I spent the bulk of
last year praying for marriages and families.
Most of our prayers were directed towards three couples in
particular. These three couples were people
that we really love and look up to. One
couple was one she grew up seeing.
Another was one I grew up around.
And the third was one that we both came to know as adults. They've each been married for as long as we can remember, and so these are the type of
couples that when you think of a good marriage...these people come to
mind. They were models for us.
I do have good news...we did pray
a whole lot.
As for the marriages...not so
good.
All three of them ended in
divorce.
Divorce has devastating
implications for community as well as for the couple. We could
spend all day and all night talking about how the local community is negatively
impacted by a splintered family.
I think about the couples that I
know and love. Having been raised in a
single parent home I learned to revere married couples. I romanticized the marriage relationship;
seeing it as a sort of holy grail or sacred treasure to be sought after and
attained. These super couples became my
idols or at least models of what a family should look like. You want to do it right, and these couples
indirectly train you on how it ought to work.
The community draws strength and
encouragement and hope for their own future that they too can live “happily
ever after.” The community is warmed by their affection for each other. Onlookers search for the security displayed
in the support and fidelity they share.
Passers-by are impressed by the idyllic sweetness of joyful exchanges
between parents and their children. It's
a beautiful sight to behold. And then
the unthinkable happens.
Our community's bastion of hope
and sweetness is obliterated by legal papers, court hearings, litigation, and
court rulings. But these aren't the
people that actually really matter when the judge's gavel strikes the sound
block. It's the family itself: the
extended family, the married couple, and the children that suffer the most.
For many people in our society
marriage is almost a joke. News reports and gossip columns are riddled with
countless stories of matchstick marriages.
People are beginning to lose faith in the sanctity of marriage. Nevertheless, no one gets married with the
intent to get divorced. There is always
an amazing and wistful story that they're able to tell about when they first
met. They were head over heels; thinking
about each other at every waking moment.
Phone calls, love letters, emails, late night conversations, long dates,
and tons of other memories filled the love bank until they determined to cash in for joint accounts.
And then everybody remembers their
wedding. Just a few weeks ago I
attended my cousin's wedding. I was so
proud of him. He stood there with his
tuxedo and white tie and pledged his love to his long time girlfriend. You should've seen this guy when we were
getting dressed. He was so nervous, you would think he was going to the electric chair.
Funny thing is, as we journeyed up the stairwell from the basement of
the church, his best man made the echoing cry, “Dead man walking!” We all laughed. He stood there and recited his own vows in
front of all those people. He was so
nervous. I was nervous for him. It made me remember my own wedding.
I was trying to smile as I saw my
bride walking down that center aisle. I
was so happy, and she was so beautiful.
Again, I tried to smile, but I couldn't stop my lips from
quivering. My lips were quivering. My legs were shaking. I was as nervous as a six year old in a stage
play.
No one stands at the altar planning to construct the nastiest divorce story ever told. No one schemes about breaking the heart of
the one they love while lighting the unity candle. People plan to live happily ever after. I suppose that's what makes the wedding so
nerve-racking. It's not the wedding we're nervous about; it's the marriage.
In the back of our mind we worry, “What if I don't measure up? What if
it doesn't work out? What if we fail?”
I suppose it's fitting to take a
commercial here and point out that the average US wedding today costs over $27,000 dollars. That's enough money to buy a really nice
pre-owned Mercedes, pay off a student loan debt, or put a down payment on a
very nice home! With people spending all this money on getting married it begs
the question of how much money they're willing to spend to stay married. In other words, we have to start teaching
young people to invest a fortune in their future marriage more-so than their
wedding ceremony.
Nevertheless, we had the big
ceremony, and after that...life happened.
We were focused on our careers, we had kids, took out a couple car
loans, bought a house, our dog had puppies, she went back to school to get
another degree, and somewhere along the way we lost touch. Isn't that how it goes? It's something like that. Maybe not quite in that order, but in the
midst of all the obstacles that life throws at you the marriage becomes a
circumstantial appendage rather than the centerpiece of the life experience.
It doesn't take long for a
person's true self to surface in the marriage relationship. Or should I say, weaknesses. In courtship a person puts their best foot
forward with the intent to knock the significant other off their feet. But in marriage, the goal of winning her love has
(in actuality) already been reached, so the game changes. Romantic love becomes secondary to getting promoted, making
partner, and paying bills. Thus a
person's shortcomings rise to the surface of visibility, and often can
become so glaring in the absence of past romantic escapades that it can serve a
major shock to the newlyweds.
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