As part of the launch for my new book, I invited some friends to share how they make their marriages beautiful. The road to beauty is not always pretty or easy. We often find ourselves in dark and difficult places and don’t know where to turn for help or companionship. One of my main goals in writing Making Marriage Beautiful was to vulnerably offer my experiences so that others would not feel so alone or hopeless. This series seeks to give more glimpses into the lives of diverse men and women who have partnered with God to create and sustain satisfying, joyful marriages.
For Better and for Worse: Keeping Vows, by Meadow Rue Merrill
When the man who had been my high-school sweetheart, Dana, and I stood before family and friends in my grandparents’ flower festooned church and pledged to love one another till death us do part, my idea of love resembled the stock photos found in ready-made frames. The laughing children. The hand-in-hand beach walks. The happy family celebrations.
In no image did I picture our family gathered around the grave of a beloved daughter; of too-tired nights to walk up the stairs to bed, let alone down a sparkling beach; of unfolding both a toddler’s stroller and a geriatric walker while helping my ailing mother get to an appointment at the hospital. I didn’t imagine either of us gaining weight or losing a job or our tempers or our time together.
No one frames such photos.
Yet there they were, smack in the middle of our wedding vows, “For better, for worse; for richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health; to love and to cherish; ‘til death us do part.”
Somehow, I imagined an ‘or’ in there, as if “for better” or “for worse” was an option. Hmmm, how long would it take you to decide?
More than two decades later, I now understand the choice isn’t between the image of how I want my life and marriage to appear and the way it actually is. The choice is how I respond to the inevitable disappointments and heartbreaks by building a wall between myself and my spouse—stone by isolating stone—or by allowing myself to recognize the hurt and disappointments we share while still choosing to love and to cherish each other in the life we have.
It’s not unlike my relationship with God, who it turns out also asks me to commit to him along the same lines—all except the “till death do us part.” In fact, throughout the New Testament, Christ is referred to as the “bridegroom.” Those who choose a relationship with him are “the bride.” Only rather than be separated from Christ at death, we are received by him after passing through it to eternal life.
“Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory,” the apostle John writes in Revelation 19:7, “for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready.”
Maybe that’s why marriage is so sacred and why those vows are so hard to keep. There isn’t any other relationship like it: where two adults make a life-time commitment to each other, not because they are born into the same family, but because they choose to be family despite all the wounds and hurts that come with it.
Many of the photos framed by my life don’t resemble those beautiful moments featured in the frames on store shelves. They reveal a deeper beauty. The husband’s arms that held me weeping in the night the day we lost our daughter. The faithful man who has slept beside me on the couch, rather than leaving me alone when I’ve been too tired to climb the stairs to bed. The gentle partner who loves and encourages me despite the ways we’ve disappointed each other.
And this too is like God, the one who promises to be with us in our suffering, who abides with us in our weakness, and who loves and welcomes us despite our failings. The depth of such love does not reveal itself when everything goes well, but when it doesn’t. Twenty-three years—or an eternity later—that’s a marriage worth celebrating.
Meadow Rue Merrill writes for children and adults from a little house in the big woods of midcoast Maine. Her memoir, Redeeming Ruth: Everything Life Takes, Love Restores, about adoption, loss, and the way God loves others through us, is available for pre-order and releases May 1 with Hendrickson Publishers. Connect at www.meadowrue.com.
Thanks for stopping by. You can read more of the stories from this series by clicking through the links. To find more information about Making Marriage Beautiful, click here.