You know somebody's married and in love when they want to die.
Sure, plenty of people I've known have been dating and wanted to die, but they were just being over-dramatic. You know a guy is deeply in love with his wife when he's ready to commit seppuku on himself.
Now I'm a cry baby. Of all my friends, I cry the most. I cry when I drink too much. I cry almost every time I watch the movie Big Fish. When my friends wives say their husbands need to get in touch with their emotional, feminine side, they call me. I walk past entire groups of women and hear, "Oh shizz, it's about to get all estrogen up in here!"
So as I'm sitting across from one of the manliest men I know, tears streaming down his face because he had emotionally hurt his wife, I'm thinking, "If I ever ever get married, I'm screwed."
I think, before I had married friends, the idea of marriage to me was a happier idea than I see it now. Not that I'm a complete heartless creep and think marriage is an abomination -- that's far from the case, I think marriage looks like a great adventure -- but marriage definitely looks less "sunshine and roses" than what I naively thought several years ago.
I remember another buddy who got married when I was still in college and I hadn't seen him for a few months. We met up and I asked him how married life was. He replied, "It's good, but everyday I'm learning how selfish I am."
I was more than a little stunned when I heard this. I thought that the way it worked was that you found a cute girl, conned her into thinking you were cool, and then fell madly in love to live mildly ever after. Instead I got into a conversation with a friend who led me to believe that marriage was more like taking a flight across a beautiful ocean while watching a beautiful sunset--and then the wings fall off of the plane.
But I left that conversation thinking -- "Well that's just his opinion. Surely marriage doesn't ever make you feel bad."
But then, sure enough, over the next 5 years, I watched more and more of my friends get married and every single one of them flourish and flounder. I watched every one of my friends experience some of the most beautiful, intimate, grace-filled moments and I've seen every one of them have their guts ripped out through their face. I've seen married men on cloud 9 and in the 9th circle of hell. I've watched them be tender with their wives and also restrain themselves from burying a phone book in her skull. Marriage is an odd, bipolar thing.
Marriage isn't for cowards. I know nothing about marriage, but I know that. If you want to get married, if you want to be a husband (or even a boyfriend), you have to be willing to see ugliness revealed both in you and in her. You have to be willing to crucify this false image you may have of who you are, who she is, and what a romantic relationship is intended to be.
I say crucify and not kill, because crucifixion was a slow, deliberate death. Any sins you have in how you relate or treat your spouse (or anybody) are never quick kills. They take a long time of deliberate rebellion against sin and a deliberate hunt for God's grace.
Any coward can sit across from their friend and say, "Marriage is teaching me that I am selfish and that I don't know how to love my wife." It takes a brave man to say, "..but I am going to wrestle with this and with God on my side, I'm going to learn what it looks like to be selfless and to truly love."
I think too often we look at marriage as this happy-go-lucky thing we are entitled too. As if we were so awesome and so lovely that we deserve to get married and we deserve to live happily ever after. I mean, don't most girls plan their wedding starting at age 5? Don't they dream of that day as if it's the only reason they were born? And to some extent, guys do too. Girls start plan their weddings out as soon as they are born. Guys start planning their wedding nights out as soon as they hit puberty.
We think marriage is this awesome gift -- and it is -- but it's a gift with a rattlesnake in it. And it will bite you in the face and you will pass out and piss your pants if you aren't paying attention.
Cowards tend to get bit by snakes more than the brave because snakes smell fear. The divorce rate (among secular AND "christian" marriages) is about 50% I believe. That tells me that there are a lot of cowards who go in thinking this will be easy, then the mistakes and injuries start piling up and they bail. Now, I know some divorces happen because there is physical or sexual abuse, but a LOT of these are happening because men and women both just run away with their tails between their legs because one or both of them wouldn't communicate or because one or both of them couldn't stop worshiping themselves.
Another thing I've seen from my friends is that marriage is a lot like giving a person a loaded gun, having them point it at you, and trusting them them not to shoot you. I have ticks, fears, neurotic ideas, and worries that I don't feel comfortable telling myself and in a marriage I'm supposed to share them with a woman and feel loved? Yeesh. Again, cowards can't do that. It takes brave people to expose themselves, to share themselves with another; to give that person a chance to hurt them, but to trust them that they won't.
In this country, we love to popularize stories of people going into war or into a hostage situation and saving the day. We love to hear about strong men and women who fight the bad guy and rescue the kids and save the kitten. We are in awe of Navy SEALS and Marines and Firefighters and Jedi Knights.
But we don't hold this same awe for a couple who not only stayed married for 30, 40, 50 years--and not just stayed married and met the status quo, but actually grew together. They grew softer and lovelier over those decades of marriage. We think, "Oh, that's cute. I hope they don't still have sex. That'd be gross."
What if we actually held people who did marriage well -- did it the way God intended -- on the same level as a superhero? What if we looked at that marriage and saw it for what it was: flawed and rocky at times, but always trending upward. It wasn't a perfect marriage, but when they screwed up, they repented, and when they did well, they were humbled. They never gave up. They never gave in to settling for "good enough." They knew what was at stake if they didn't do all they could to love each other and to push each other toward greater things. They took hits and scars; they hurt each other and betrayed each other, but always found a way to show each other grace.
They were brave. They hung in there like underdogs and fought it out. He wasn't a coward. She wasn't a coward. They did well. So can you.
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