The other day I received another “Save the date”
announcement about an upcoming family wedding.
This fall my extended family is looking forward to celebrating two
weddings (so far) and three babies. Such news is heart-warming. It tells me
that the next generation is willing to try again where I of my generation may
possibly have missed the mark.
Each wedding, each baby, is a symbol of hope that
something good is going to happen in each of these five families.
These kindergartners at marriage and family begin with
tons more information than I and my generation had when we started out. We had little
more than a bed, a stove, a few dishes, and some odds and ends of knowledge
about what it took to make a marriage work. We thought love alone would be
enough. Sometimes it was, sometimes it wasn’t.
After the marriage vows, which today are quite
different than what we promised in our day, two very different people agree to
love and cherish forever and forever.
Today forever is not forever for many reasons: death, divorce, separation, desertion and
much more. Incompatibility often rises to the top of the list.
Thinking about these upcoming family weddings, I reflect. I agree with Kathleen Norris in Acedia and Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer’s Life that
commitment always costs. “There is a particular burden in loving another
person....This is the love demanded of any husband, wife, or parent.” Marriage keeps testing the vow to stay
married. She dealt with her husband’s physical and
emotional illnesses, as well as alcoholism and early death.
It is easy to fall in love, in fact, stay in love,
when someone else does the cooking and cleaning after a night of dining and
you only have to clean up after
yourself. As Norris writes, it is hard to tolerate, much less love, the person
who shares kitchen, bath, and bed. And
maybe hogs more than half it when, as in my case, your spouse is a good foot
taller and the bed a good foot shorter than today.
I
don’t think marriages are made in heaven.
They’re chiseled out here on earth, day after day, meal by meal, baby
by baby, laundry hamper by laundry hamper.
There will be days when you are taken to the depths
of despair and wonder why you ever agreed to this strange arrangement. But also
moments when you wish you could do this forever, and forever. As Norris writes,
“As love takes us on a harrowing journey, even to hell and back, we may find
the path arduous but remain convinced that it is the only one worth taking.”
A newly-wed doesn’t fully grasp that marriage means
a brand-new identity as now one of two rather than two separate beings. You remain
yourself and yet somehow you become part of another while remaining yourself. Strange.
Today not all women change their surnames as expected
in my day, which added to a bewildering change in identity, both welcomed and
confusing. I ended up at the end of the
alphabet in any listing as a Wiebe, rather than near the beginning with my
maiden name Funk. But that was a small part of the whole identity thing.
A young person in the heady moments of passion doesn’t
reckon on the fact that married life will
become a series of repetitive activities with occasional high moments. What I remember most about my 15-year
marriage are not the times of great physical intimacy but the tender moments
together at the end of the day drinking a cup of tea and sharing what life had
been.
Norris cites a study that showed that good and
stable marriages were produced by embracing one’s spouse at the beginning and
end of each day. Even a little peck on the cheek was enough. That small action was
the only one that made a consistent difference.
I also think that is important. My husband always kissed me before he left for the day. We also found that praying
together each evening helped. It is hard to pray when you are angry. Prayer then becomes a
sham.
Norris’s book is not primarily about marriage. It includes much about her lifelong struggle with acedia (or sloth, the lack of ability
to care for life). She found strength in the monastic tradition and in praying the
psalms. She became an oblate in Minnesota
monastery while living in a small community in South Dakota.
One reviewer
writes that Norris, gently, with no fanfare, “preaches the practicality of love—healing,
empowering, sustaining. What demon, however insidious, can compete with that?” None, I say.
Two weddings, three babies. I rejoice with each couple. These are important new beginnings. Go for it.
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