Marriage

Last Sunday evening my husband Lee and I attended a workshop held at my church entitled “Leadership Development,” led by Henry Wildeboer, an Associate Professor of Tyndale Theological Seminary. In passing, he had mentioned something pertaining to the Bible that struck me only because it rang so true in my one and a half years of experience in being a “wife.”

Just follow the principles of marriage taught in the Bible and you’ll unearth enough evidence to confirm the truth of Christianity. This was Wildeboer’s bold assertion, though I’m paraphrasing him because I don’t remember his exact words.

I might have at first understood such a statement in theory, but entering my second year of marriage, am now finding myself living it. Though I will not disclose the roller coaster of events that have already taken place in our “new life” together, I can only say that I would have been so lost—exasperated—worn— if my husband and I did not have a God to turn to during this journey, as brief as it has been thus far.

Whether it was knowing that every Sunday morning, even in our sleepy state, we had to get up bright and early to attend worship service and later discuss amongst ourselves over lunch the insights into the week’s sermon, or at one time or another we had to put aside our selfishness and our egos to consider the other’s needs not simply in the name of “love” but because that was what our Creator wanted of us, or that in our most vulnerable, volatile moments, there was nothing else we could do in our incredible weakness but to pray and surrender all of our uncertainties to our Father.

And then there are all the unspoken, unseen moments in-between, the ones that no one else would know of except my better half, and sometimes not even.

The times when I worry about my own spiritual journey, and then his; the times when I worry about the choices I make, and then his; the times when I worry about the person I will become, and then who he will become. These, as the Bible teaches, are not in my control: I am not my husband's keeper, God is. And therein lies my peace.

As with contentment. When God removes me from the deception that marriage is about the big house, the x number of kids, the dream car, the rising of our status in the affluent circle we inhabit--and teaches me through the most trivial moments of my life that true contentment is about now. The absolute beauty intrinsic to marriage is seen in the moment when two people who love each other aspire to love God--in their individuality, in the tiny and subtle way in which they show each other grace, and in their belief that every one of these moments is a gift, a manifestation of the Creator's goodness.

And thereupon I realize, or rather I am reminded of once again, that God is the ruler of my marriage—the model of love, the source of hope amidst despair, and the only way I can place my trust, my entire being, everything that’s at stake, in another person’s hands—because as Christians, Lee and I, we are not here living lives solely for ourselves or even for each other, but for something greater, something beyond who we both are.

In spite of everything, I can attest that God has been our guide, the shining star in the nightfall of our marriage.

And in such moments, I can’t help but wonder, what is marriage if not sacred?