November 08, 2007
He's in, I'm in
Sometimes I am so excited to marry him that I can barely contain it. Every day it seems my love for him grows - as I learn more about him; as I learn more about myself. Sometimes I wonder who I was outside the scope of him. Surely I was already complete - of course I was - complete in the fullness as a child of God, yet still, unfinished somehow. One day I looked up and literally, there he was. Everything just fell into place and it all feels so seamless. I feel lucky, but I know that it is not luck. There is no luck. There are choices. There is will. And there is blessing. Indescribable, unearned blessing.
But at the same time I can’t stop framing it as how lucky I am. What if I’d given up? What if I had given in? What if I had settled? The ring on my finger regularly catches my eye and though I am getting used to - getting used to navigating around it and spinning it inside my palm when I pump gas or when I’m navigating an unknown city - I still can’t believe that I am now one of Them. Allison always used to tell me that life wasn’t that different on the other side, except that you happen to be married. Not to say that things don’t change or that there aren’t new challenges - I think her point always was the same as that old cliché - wherever you go, there you are.
Shortly after Melissa’s wedding she read me a quote from a book she was reading that said something like, if you’re looking to do the work of Jesus in the world, stay single. If you want to learn to be more like Jesus? Get married.
Marriage is a constant battle between submitting to the Word and to this imperfect husband and your own self-centered, prideful, stubborn self. Both Colleen and Melissa have told me since their respective weddings that they feel closer to God now that they‘re someone‘s wife than they ever did in their previous lives. What is it about marriage that shows us more of who God is? That teaches us more of who Jesus is? Is it the constant daily dying to yourself? Killing your worldliness and pride - the pride that may have kept us single for so long?
In Paul’s letter to the church in Ephesus, he writes that marriage is a “profound mystery” because it tells us something about the mystery of God and the relationship between Christ and the church. (I’ve heard many brilliant pastors preach awesome sermons on Ephesians 5. Dr. John Piper has several on desiring god.org and you can download Voddie Bacchum and Louie Giglio’s messages on marriage at 722.org and northpoint.org.)
In a 7:22 series from several years ago - Boy Meets Girl - Louie Giglio defines commitment as a “desire to love that goes beyond circumstances.” Commitment and love aren’t things that just “happen” to us. There is no cupid. There is no arrow. There is the moment when you make a choice - this is the person, this is the relationship, this is the life that I am going to choose - till death do us part.
Louie goes on to say that commitment is two people submitting to God and to each other with no intention - zero intention - of turning back; it’s believing that no matter what the world throws our way (and there will be trouble - even Jesus said that we will have trouble in this world) that God is enough and we will press forward.
God created marriage and he loves marriage. Scripture says that whatever God has joined together, let no man separate. As far as He is concerned, divorce is a myth. You can separate your homes, but you can never undo what God has unified into one. It’s a mystery! Why does God bind us as one flesh on Earth? I don’t know, but it is a balm to know that God cares about my marriage; He cares about all marriage. But of course He cares about it - He designed it! In the perfect, sinless Garden, when everything was as He created, He saw that it was “not good” for Adam to be alone, so He created Eve to be Adam’s helpmate and declared that it then was “good.”
From the very beginning of our relationship - and it seems like now that we began discussing marriage on our first date, but surely we didn’t - but from the beginning we both said that divorce is not an option. It is off the table. I chose. He chose. I’m in. He’s in. But it is a battle we will have to fight daily - divorce is like an undertow in our culture, waiting to drown us. Just this week I have learned of three new marriages in the process of falling apart - one of them nasty, infiltrated with lawyers and custody battles; another quietly disintegrated, two spouses who’ve retreated to separate rooms, unsure of how to fix things now that they are no longer children in their home to hold them together.
But when I think of our marriage as a picture of Christ‘s love for the world, I can‘t imagine ever being separated. After all, who can separate what God has joined? Christ will never divorce me; He will never leave me; He will never forsake me. So until death parts us, I am in.
And luckily for us, God is most definitely in - without Him, we’d be doomed. I am marrying someone who is inadequate and imperfect - and so is he! But God is sufficient and He has promised to provide and be with us. Because of what He has done, I can say “I do!”
Posted by hannah at 11:52 AM
