As I have mentioned before, we have four weddings in the next three months. These weddings have caused me to take more time to consider my commitment to and understanding of marriage. While I greatly respect my friends and family who do not agree with my view of traditional marriage, I know I need to express these views clearly with love. I decided to express my reflections as a letter to the brides and grooms who will soon marry.
“A Letter to the Bride and Groom”
Dear Bride and Groom,
Congratulations on making the decision to love and be loved and to commit yourselves to one another, without reserve, for as long as you both shall live! It is an exciting adventure and a daunting task, this commitment of marriage. It is not simply a worldly declaration of your love for another, but rather it is proclamation of a vow to live and die for another.
You will live and die in this marriage, every day as choose to love. For while the world may tell you that love is a feeling to be acted upon, those who espouse the commitment of marriage will tell you that the feelings of love wax and wane. It is the decision to love that endures through the long dark nights. I know you can’t imagine now that those passionate feelings and endearing qualities could ever not be a part of your relationship. Love endures as long as we decide to love.
Marriage is not lived in isolation. It is the very foundation of a social society and that is why we have witnesses to marriage. Marriage is a vow between husband and wife, but it must be witnessed to be valid in the church and in the state. While there are many legal reasons a marriage is verified by witnesses, I believe the most basic human reason is because we are not meant to do this alone. We need others around us to support us, to love us and to help us live out this commitment for years to come. We also need our friends and our families to gently remind us of the flame of love they witnessed when we exchanged our vows. Their belief in our commitment fans the flame of love.
I hope you embrace a life of faith as individuals and as a couple. I cannot imagine being married without God in our lives. The bible is a love story which begins with the creation of man and woman in marriage and ends with a wedding feast in heaven. The Bible begins and ends with marriage, as the love story of God’s love for His people unfolds in the middle. St. Paul tells us that marriage is “a mystery of Christ and His church” (Ephesians 5:32), meaning that our marriages are a foretaste of the eternal union we will experience with God in heaven. The saying rings true that there are “marriages made in heaven,”
Jesus was challenged on his view of marriage by the Pharisees who lived their lives by the letter of the law. Jesus told them to go back to the beginning; to the first marriage to find the answers they seek.
“And He answered and said, “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and to the two shall become one. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.”… Matthew 19:4-6.
If ever there was a one-paragraph instruction manual on marriage, here it is. It would take a life time to understand these words of Jesus, but I have gleaned three points to share with you for the journey ahead. Marriage requires that we leave, we cleave and protect one another for the rest of our lives.
The first step in giving oneself in marriage is that we must be willing to leave our homes and build a new life together. At the beginning this seems so easy to do. As the saying goes, “you can’t choose your family” but you do choose your spouse. So you would think that you would choose a spouse who is the perfect combination of the best of your family minus all the annoying weaknesses you grew up with, right? Mostly wrong. Life experience and even statistics say that we choose what is familiar to us, whether we like it or not. So where is this leaving behind that Jesus says needs to happen for a man and woman to become one? It is in the choice to embrace our spouses as the person they are and not as the people we expect them to become. For marriages to grow, spouses must try to leave behind the old patterns and embrace a new life with one another.
Once we leave, it is time to cleave. The dictionary definition of cleave is “to adhere firmly, loyally and unwaveringly”. The physical nature of our bodies as man and woman provides us with a clear understanding of what Jesus refers to as “the two become one flesh”. The marriage of a man and woman aptly fits the definition of marriage that Jesus says was “from the beginning”. While sex is lived in the flesh, it is born of the mind, spirit and will. Two becoming one is just as much lived out in the day to day as it is enacted in the bedroom. Live out then, this message of your marriage imprinted on your bodies as man and woman. I once heard it expressed that foreplay begins with washing the dishes and doing the laundry. The total self giving that is expressed in the bedroom begins in laying our lives down for one another with little sacrifices of love.
Jesus tells us to protect the gift we have been given. This last verse in the paragraph; “what God has joined, let no man separate”(vs 6) can be seen as a warning to those outside the marriage. I think it is a loving admonition to those of us who choose to marry with God at the center of our union. While you cannot foresee anyone or anything separating your marriage today, you will understand these words tomorrow. Whether it comes from the outside – in the lure of relationships that beckon us or work and circumstances that we place as more important than our marriage, or from the inside-in the form of compulsions and addictions that steal our hearts from this union; there will always be something to come between the two of you. I believe this is why Jesus tells us not to let or allow, anything or anyone to separate what God has joined. We always have a choice to make. Be in it to win it. Choose to protect your marriage and get help from others to stay the course of love.
On this your wedding day, dear Bride and Groom, I wish you every heavenly blessing, every earthly experience of love and laughter and the grace to see each other through every storm. Know that your marriage is made in heaven, lived on earth and carries with it the hope of generations to come.
Eileen Benthal has a B.A. in theology from Franciscan University of Steubenville. She is a writer, speaker and wellness coach at 40DaysToFocus.com and NOFO Wellness Center. She works with clients locally and around the U.S. who are excited about balancing their health in body, mind and spirit.
Eileen and her husband Steve live in Jamesport and have four young adult children. Their youngest, 16-year-old Johanna, is a teenager with special needs. Eileen can be reached at eileenbenthal@gmail.com and facebook.com/40DaysToFocus.
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