Marriage On The Rocks

Bartender, I'll take a marriage... on the rocks... served extra cold please.

Ever had one of those days? I'll be perfectly honest with you. I have. Over my 7 years of marriage, I've been in and out of love with it. Not out of love with my wife. I love my wife. I've never stopped loving my wife. I wouldn't know how to go about doing that. To "fall out of love" with the one whom you fell in love with indicates that you stopped "falling" for them at one point in time. By the very virtue of the word "fall", means you would have had to hit the ground. "Falling out of love" would indicate a separate fall altogether. In that case, that means probably another "Falling in love" with something else, yourself, or someone else. My point is, I love my wife.

I have had issues with my marriage over the years that have caused me to want to call it quits. I haven't and don't want to call it quits. I'd like to tell you that I would never call it quits, but the fact of the matter is that I have a divorce under my belt already. People can claim to have great resolve. That they'd bear down through anything. However in marriage it takes two to tango. The other person in the marriage must have the same resolve and tenacity as their mate or it won't work. Thus my first marriage ended.

The difference in my first marriage and the one I'm in now is the passion and intense desire to be together. To make it work no matter what comes your way. To embrace tragedy together. To be patient when change is suddenly thrust upon you and you're at each other's throats because your world quickly lost its gravity. That vow of "in sickness and in health" thing has to really stick. You've got to have a plan to be together for the rest of your lives. And I do. It's actually one of my life goals to kiss her on our 50th anniversary. I intend to keep the until death do us part and I hope she does too. So far, so good.

My wife is an amazing woman. I can't even begin to tell you how blessed I am to have her. But she and I have had our ups and downs. There were critical moments where either one of us could have walked away. We both have enough flaws to give each other reasons for sure. But our commitment to work through our issues and work on our marriage has been the greatest thing for us. It's hard. Really hard. But the payoff is immense.

It is because of this struggle (you know the one you'll either admit you have or not) that I write today. I've been reading a book called Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller. I just finished it up on Saturday. I have to tell you that it is one of the most refreshing books I've read in a long time. It isn't a book on marriage at all. It's his non-religious thoughts on Christian spirituality. At any rate, he has this poem he was writing called Polaroid. It was originally about a husband and wife who were divorcing, but midstream he decided to write it as if they were at the point of divorce and were now going to stay together. The way they kept it together was beautiful and I am including it here in it's entirety for you to read.

The ending to the poem is the resolve I want to have. The kind of man I want to be. The man who loves regardless of the return of love. It made me cry reading it. I'm sure it will move you too. Unless your heart is blackened and cold. Just kidding. Poetry may not be your cup o' tea. I didn't know it was mine and still don't. But this poem is a thing of beauty that I will cherish forever.

Oh, and just a hot tip before I sign off and let you read on. Don't send this to your wife in an email without explaining that the end of it is the most beautiful thing in it. I sent it to mine and she thought I was trying to tell her something. Oi.

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What great gravity is this that drew my soul toward yours? What great force, that though I went falsely, went kicking, went disguising myself to earn your love, also disguised, to earn your keeping, your resting, your staying, your will fleshed into mine, rasped by a slowly revealed truth, the barter of my soul, the soul, that I fear, the soul that I loathe, the soul that: if you will love, I will love. I will redeem you, if you will redeem me? Is this our purpose, you and I together to pacify each other, to lead each other toward the lie that we are good, that we are noble, that we need not redemption, save the one that you and I invented of our own clay?

I’m not scared of you, my love, I am scared of me.

I went looking, I wrote a list, I drew an image, I bled a poem for you. You were pretty, and my friends believed I was worthy of you. You were clever, but I was smarter, the only one liable to be led by you. You see, love, I did not love you, I loved me. And you were only a tool I used to fix myself, to fool myself, to redeem myself. And though you’ve taught me to lay my hand in yours, I walk alone, for I cannot talk to you, lest you talk it back to me, lest I believe that I am not worthy, not deserving, not redeemed.

I want desperately for you to be my friend. But you’re not my friend; you have slipped up warmly to the person I wanted to be, the person I pretended to be, and I was your Jesus and, you were mine. Should I show you you who I am, we may crumble. I am not scared of you, my love, I am scared of me.

I want to be known and loved anyway. Can you do this? I trust by your easy breathing that you are human just like me, that you are fallen like me, that you are lonely, like me. My love, do I know you? What is this gravity that pulls us so painfully toward each other? Why do we not connect? Will we forever be fleshing this out? And how will we with words, narrow words, come into the knowing of each other? Is this God’s way of meriting grace, of teaching us of the labyrinth of His love for us, in degrees, that which He is sacrificing to join ourselves to Him? Or better yet, has He formed our being fractional so that we might conclude one great hope, plodding and sighing and breathing into one another in such a great push that we may break into the known and being loved, only to cave into a greater perdition and fall down at His throne still begging for our acceptance? Begging for our completion?

We were fools to believe that we would redeem each other.

Were I some Eve, to wake and find myself resting at your rib, to share these things that God has done, to walk with you through the garden, you counselling my timid Steps, my bewildered eye, my heart so slow to love, so careful to love, so sheepish that you stepped up your aim and became a man. Is this what God intended? That though he made me from you rib, it is I who is making you, humbling you, destroying you and in so doing revealing Him.

Will we be ashes before we are one?

What gravity is this that drew my heart toward yours? What great force collapsed my orbit, my lonesome state? What is this that wants in me the want in you? Don’t we go to each other with yielded eyes, with cumbered hands and feet, with clunky tongues? This deed is unattainable! We cannot know each other!

I am quitting this thing, but not what you think. I am not going away.

I will give you this, my love, and I will not bargain or barter any longer. I will love you, as sure as He has loved me. I will discover what I can discover and though you remain a mystery save God’s own knowledge, what I disclose of you I will keep in the warmest chamber of my heart, the very chamber where God has stowed himself in me. And I will do this to my death, and to death it may bring me.

I will love you like God, because of God, mighted by the power of God. I will stop expecting your love, demanding your love, trading for your love, gaming for your love. I will simply love. I am giving myself to you, and tomorrow I will do it again. I suppose the clock itself will wear thin its time before I am ended at this altar of dying and dying again.

God risked himself on me. I will risk myself on you. And together we will learn to love, and perhaps then, only then, understand this gravity that drew Him, unto us.