I don't know how we even got on the topic last night; maybe it was just as we were thanking God for the blessings of the week which, for me, included our 33rd wedding anniversary. But I found myself giving thanks to God for the wonders he has worked in my relationship with my bride, in the context of the full arc (thus far) of our marriage. I shared the abbreviated version with the group, but here is a little more history, and I hope that my sharing it does not bring her any sense of embarrassment but rather underscores my love for her.
We were high school sweethearts. Now, I've known some high school couples who (seem to) have had a fairly mature and healthy relationship which developed into an eventual marriage and a stable life together. By no stretch of the imagination were we such a couple. When we entered into our marriage we were both insecure and immature and broken in very different ways. The roots of my brokenness can be found meandering all through this blog, probably mostly under the headings of Alcoholism, Childhood, Family, Sexual abuse and Suicide. My wife's childhood issues would probably appear less traumatic to an outsider, but I'm sure it was no easier for her to live through her torments.
Our relationship in high school was on-again-off-again, marked by emotional neediness and instability. We dated exclusively for the second half of our sophomore year, at the end of which I broke up with her at my mother's insistence that I not commit too closely when I had so little experience of relationships. From that point we resumed and broke off our relationship several times, each hurting the other by our misunderstanding of love and by living according to the world's influence. We split up completely after high school, and she subsequently bore a daughter (whom I would later adopt as my own). I was never able to find someone who wanted to date for very long. In hindsight, I wouldn't have wanted to date a stoner like me, either; it must have looked as if I had no future at all. I did have a couple of close female friends in college, and in both cases developed romantic feelings for them that in one instance were not reciprocated and in the other could not be acted upon. And since the majority of my sexual experiences were warped ones at the hands of an abuser (whatever good might be said about him, I must not allow my brain to reject this thought), dating someone as evidence of my heterosexuality was becoming a great need in my life. And then out of the blue came a misunderstood message from my best friend that my high school girlfriend wished I would get in touch with her. He'd really been trying to tell me about someone else, but I got the message wrong. I called her and we talked; she was dating someone, we wished each other a good life, end of story. Until they broke up a few weeks later. We got together one evening just to talk, started dating almost immediately, vowed to take things slow without having a very accurate understanding of what "slow" meant, and here we are today.
It is not from any current judgment that either of us made a poor choice that I reflect that, had we been emotionally healthy, we each might have made a very different choice of spouses. She might have waited for someone who appreciated her more at the time for who she really is; I might have sought someone with whom I shared more common interests. In this ideal world that doesn't exist, things might have been very different for us as a result.
We have never lived in such a world. Nor am I suggesting that things would have been better for us.
For in the world in which we do live, we reached out to one another in our respective brokenness, and gave ourselves to one another in the sacrament of matrimony, neither of us having the slightest inkling of anything like the concept of God having a plan for us with which we might or might not be aligning our own decision-making. If by happenstance we did so it was by our blind groping, not by our design, as we weren't giving God the slightest consideration. We were plunging forward, convinced that we were doing what we wanted and what was best for our already-growing family.
Yet God is not surprised by any choice we make, nor any pain we experience. He has seen all of our decisions and is now in his love for us making provision for those we will make tomorrow.
Along came: an Air Force career with both hard-earned successes and crushing setbacks beyond our control; infidelity of heart, mind and flesh; mistrust; judgment; financial irresponsibility; abuse; in short, all of the brokenness that two emotionally unhealthy people should expect to reap from building a life together while continually hoping that things might get better but without actually each working on their own deeply-buried issues. There was also spiritual conversion along the way, but not as yet the emotional healing that we both needed.
Had we actually taken the step of divorce - which we once chose during a brief time when we could not afford to carry it out - the world and indeed our very Church would examine a broken couple like us and determine that there were clearly such profound impediments to the spiritual consummation of our marriage that no marriage had actually occurred and that ours could be annulled. And yet God's plan for us was greater all along than our brokenness; indeed, God's plan was to use our respective brokenness to pour healing and love into each of our lives.
So today we are two individuals bound together as one flesh, a couple that is in love with each other in many ways similar to how God loves us, seeing our shortcomings and loving each other deeply despite them. We also know that there are many aspects of our relationship together that do not yet reflect the way God loves us, self-centered concerns and approaches to our life together that he is still in the ceaseless (in this life) process of converting to holy matrimony. And while our life and our love is not without conflict and frustration, I am grateful - and it is important that I be grateful - for this bride whom I love so much and am growing to love so well, and for the love which he pours into my life through her.
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