Marriage Quality

Different countries have taken a stand on the issue of marriage - well, it's definition, anyway.  All over the world wide web, different personalities, celebrities, pastors and lay people alike have dipped into their buckets of theological and secular opinions and typed their fingers raw about who gets to marry whom.  But one thing that has been absent amidst the nuptial noise is what marriage is - not just who gets to partake in it.

Our contemporary western culture thrives on its ability to define our lives by the available options.  Marriage is no different.  We revel in the fact that we have twenty kinds of toothpaste from which to choose and even Australia is famous for the world's biggest selection of car models.  As I walk down the grocery aisle, it is not lost on me that I can select from seven different types of toilet paper while thinking about which kind peanut butter will create the perfect PBNJ sandwich for me. 

That kind of decision making process, so many choices coupled with our contemporary understanding of time paupery, leads to a diminished view, in my opinion, of what marriage actually is.  Instead of a holy promise of life time commitment, perpetual forgiveness and a cohesion of faith, we find 21st century marriage titrated through the pipette of choice culture.  Marriage has become disposable, like exchanging a Samsung for an iPhone.  It just depends on what model trips your trigger.

In the animal kingdom, there are all sorts of fauna which mate for life.  Gibbons (it's kind of like a monkey - I had to look at the picture), swans, black vultures, wolves and even albatrosses (I'm not sure how to pronounce that one) find the perfect mate and stay with them for life while raising a brood of infants (gibbons), cygnets, chicks, wolflets (I know, they are really cubs, but I like this better), and baby albatri.  With the divorce rate escalating beyond fifty percent, we find that people are mating for all sorts of reasons other than life.  Some marry for money, some marry for 'love,' some marry for the comfort and ease of continuing to share the same space in which they have been living.  But the culture really doesn't marry until death parts us - only until choice separates us.

Looking at the statistics for divorce, it seems like our contemporary culture should be much more obsessed with marriage quality than marriage equality.  Unfortunately, as the acceptance for divorce seems just another choice in the shopping list of matrimony, we encounter not a vow of faithfulness but a vow of 'like.'  What I mean by that is: in this day and age as we strive for the metaphorical 'thumbs up', marriage can seem like that.  Conditionally speaking, we stay with our spouses as long as they please us (as long as they keep 'liking' what we do, or we 'like' what they do.)  We post messages and videos of the perfect side of life, but when the other half does something that threatens our sense of individual choice and happiness, we react with almost an instantaneous de-friending.

We don't marry our friends but profiles on our own Facebook page.

So, we see that marriage is less about mating for life as it is enjoying the wedding.  A pastor I used to work with said it like this:  "I find it interesting the more I meet with couples that they spend so much time planning for the wedding that they forget about the marriage afterwards.  I liken it to a couple preparing to go on a cruise around the world but they blow their entire financial resources on the going away party rather than the ports of call on the trip."  The wedding day with all of its glamor and glitz, invitations and expectations, dances and speeches, overwhelms couples before the marriage and often handicaps the real questions that need to be asked before they say their "I wills."

I think I have incredible marriage quality; perhaps it stems from the fact that we met on a Christian ministry team which traveled for seventeen months before we decided to get married.  Romance doesn't usually blossom in a minibus pulling a trailerful of musical equipment, but for some reason, it did for us.

Our anniversary was this last week - we have been married for eighteen years, but every year on August 15th (August 9th is our wedding anniversary) I celebrate the first day I met Christine.  Some may find it sappy that I know this, but at the risk of grossing out both my in-laws and relatives, the first day I saw Christine was memorable.

Vikki, my sister, and I were traveling back from the annual trip from Canada where she was going to drop me off at the church where our training was to occur.  Since I would be on the road for seventeen months, I had a few things packed, but as Vikki and I drove those endless miles from Thunder Bay to Minneapolis, talked about all sorts of things including my girlfriend at the time (who doubled as a friend of Vikki's also). 

We pulled into the parking lot of the church and as Vikki turned the car key to cut the car's engine, a vision of loveliness walked by outside her car.  Through the windshield I noticed this long-legged beauty in her short shorts, blue top and braided hair.  My mouth must have been agape because Vikki looked over at me and said,

"Don't even think about it."

So I met Christine twenty years ago today.  She was the first person I saw on our ministry band and the first (and only) person that filled the empty parking space reserved for 'spouse.'

Marriage quality is not just about sharing all the good things, but even more so all the troubles.  What cements a marriage is not the vacations, but the daily grind which smoothes splintery roughness of life.  The daily grind is where we spend most of our lives and yet far too often it is the daily grind which seems to be what couples attempt to avoid.

So, as I reflect on my own twenty years of seeing Christine in new and reflected lights, I ponder anew the goodness of God who first instituted the holy place of marriage.  I continue to pray that this generation, and the next, find fulfillment of God's love in marriage.