Marriage

I recently read a blog post by my friend Paige that I liked about marriage and the struggles we go through. She talked about reading about someone saying they wished that at the end of 7 years they could decide if they could walk away or marry again. She commented on how knowing that there's not an escape hatch on bad, grumpy, bad breathe days and that it's the glue that helps them work through the hard times.

Now I know many who have gone through divorces, or have parents who have done so, and this is a painful topic. I've been touched by it too. We have been through our fair share of tough times as a couple and a family. But still I am so grateful for Paolo at my side. I'm grateful for loving and forgiveness, and for sacrifice.

I'm slowly (very slowly) reading Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis again after a very long time. I just read the chapter on marriage and wanted to share what I liked from it.

"The Christian idea of marriage is based on Christ's words that a man and wife are to be regarded as a single organism- for that is what the words "one flesh" in modern English would be. And the Christians believe that when He said this He was not expressing a sentiment but stating a fact- just as one is stating a fact when one says that a lock and its key are one mechanism, or that a violin and a bow are one musical instrument. The inventor of the human machine was telling us that the its two halves, the male and the female, were made to be combined together in pairs, not simply on the sexual level, but totally combined...

The idea the "being in love" is the only reason for remaining married really leaves no room for marriage as a contract or promise at all. If love is the whole thing, then the promise can add nothing; and if it adds nothing, then it should not be made. The curious thing is that lovers themselves, while they remain really in love, know this better than than those who talk about love. As Chesterton pointed out, those who are in love have a natural inclination to bind themselves by promises. Love songs all over the world are full of vows in eternal constancy...

And of course, the promise, made when I am in love and because I am in love, to be true to the beloved as long as I live, commits one to being true even if I cease to be in love. A promise must be about things that I can do, about actions: no one can promise to go on feeling in a certain way. He might as well promise to never have a headache or always to feel hungry. But what it may be asked, is the use of keeping two people together if they are no longer in love? ...

But, of course, ceasing to be "in love" need not mean ceasing to love. Love in this second sense- love as distinct from "being in love" is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by (in Christian marriages) the grace which both parents ask, and receive, from God. They can have this love for each other even at those moments when you don't like each other; as you love yourself even when you do not like yourself. They can retain this love even when each would easily, if they allowed themselves, be "in love" with someone else. "Being in love" first moved them to promise fidelity: this quieter love enables them to keep the promise. It is on this love that the engine of marriage is run: being in love was the explosion that started it." (see pages 99-100)

I'm grateful for families and for marriage. I'm grateful for my sweetheart. I'm grateful that we work at it one day at a time. I'm grateful that we're not alone in the wonderful adventure (and sometimes difficult struggle) of marriage and families. I know that God wants to help us in our best moments and in our worst. I'm grateful for that superhuman help.