An Apology To Married Folk

1st Ammendment or not, I would like to apologize to my married readers for my post entitled "What Is The Point of Marriage?" But I'm not exactly sorry for writing it. I was simply posing some questions and processing out loud, which was the point for me starting this whole blog in the first place. I think it's a shame when people can't openly discuss otherwise taboo questions. Asking questions is the only way to learn. And I like to learn. But here's where the apology comes in. I'm sorry that I didn't complete my thought and I left some married people with the wrong impression. The challenge for writers is to get their tone right, and apparently I didn't. I came across as blithely disrespectful to people who have worked hard at their marriage and have stayed together for a long time. That definitely wasn't my intent. It seems that miscommunication is not always in the words you say but in what you leave out. I was simply trying to probe deeper into the meaning of marriage and what it means to have a good marriage. I was kind of poking fun at some of the platitudes, but I think some people took it personally. And rightly so, because marriage is a rather personal thing. Not to mention the fact that all of this is coming from someone who is single and has zero experience being married. Which is why I write as an inquisitive student, not as a teacher.

Anyway, I would like to honor my parents who have been married for 32 years. I was there for most of their marriage because I was the firstborn. I witnessed the whole 'happily ever after' firsthand. It wasn't perfect, but it was real and alive. When I look at their marriage now, I see lustrous gold that has been refined in life's fire. I think their marriage is better than it's ever been, filled with a tempered peace and joy that had to be fought for. God's fingerprints are all over it. I know that many married couples stay together for the kids and I am so grateful that my parents loved us enough to keep us all under one roof. I truly believe that they have a successful marriage, a marriage that is about staying together but also so much more than that. It's about love.

Friending

"I think we should just be friends." Those words have always loomed as a guillotine to any romantic interest. Their weight has crushed many hopeful hearts. They're meant to soften the punch, but they always feel like the kiss of Judas. Just friends? That's it? Well, I have more than enough friends, just look at my Facebook page! But at second glance, I'm beginning to see that I've underestimated the value of friendship in the realm of romance. I've always segregated the two. Now that I think about it, I'm quite the dunce, after all she is called a girlfriend.

I've heard many people say that you should marry your bestfriend. I realize now that my perspective on love had always been so unrealistic and immature that that sage advice never made sense to me. But now I actually believe it. Micheal W. Smitty was right when he sang those ol' campy words "Friends are friends forever if the Lord's the Lord of them." Romance comes and goes, but friendship remains. In 2 Samuel, David said of Jonathan "Your love to me was wonderful, surpassing the love of women." Apparently, what David had with Jonathan and didn't have with women was a deep friendship. Yet, I think it is possible to have that kind of friendship in a marriage.

As I'm trying to decide what kind of a person I should marry, what I'm really doing is deciding on what kind of a friend I want to have for the rest of my life. I now realize that the qualities that I look for in a friend are very similar to what I am looking for in a wife. I think that he who finds a true friend finds a good thing. So the question is what is a true friend? I think that wedding vows mirror the covenant of a true friendship--"for richer or poorer, in sickness and health, till death do us part." A true friendship is unconditional. A sincere friend will love you through your insanity, your failure, your crap. When your world falls apart they will help you put it back together. You can lay down your armor around your friends and know that you're safe. You share a language of unmasked honesty. A good friend is a vault for your secrets, and will go to battle for you when anyone speaks ill of you. A real friend enjoys your God-given personality, quirks and all, and they won't try to change you into someone else. They believe in you, they invest in you. You are on a journey together and will never leave the other behind, come what may. You will both fight for the friendship as if you are fighting for your very lives. You will wrong each other and you will forgive gratuitously because the friendship is more important than being in the right.

I now realize that venturing further into friendship is to be on my way to sublime love. Jesus said "No greater love has a man than to lay down his life for a friend." That's as good as it gets, finding someone who will die for you, and you for them. In hindsight, I've known a lot of people, but I've had few real friends. Some friendships aren't really friendships, some "friends" just take and take and they'll stick around as long as you give them what they want, or be who they need you to be. Oddly enough, it is very possible to build a relationship on selfishness, where there is an unspoken agreement that if certain conditions aren't met then love will be withheld. But that's not love, and that's not friendship. Anyway, I hope to marry a real friend. Or rather, I hope to be a real friend to her. It goes both ways. As the ancient proverb says "He who desires friends must himself be friendly."

What Is The Point of Marriage?

Our generation's version of love is broken. The well is poisoned and we all keep drinking from it. When something like marriage is working less than half the time, it is in need of more than minor adjustments. As a culture, this calls for a massive, messy gutting. This calls for a complete reprogramming in the way we understand love and relationships. If we stubbornly keep venturing farther down the same road then we are going to get the same results, it'll just get worse.

It's odd to me that most married couples seem to gauge the success of their marriage simply based on how many years they've been married. Each anniversary is another gold star. If they've been married 30 years, then it's considered a success by most standards and everybody claps. But to us singles, it always sounds like they're riding a mechanical bull, and that it's all about how long you can stay on. Apparently, you're supposed to get married and then just hang on for dear life as you're whipped around and whoever stays on the longest wins. At least that's the impression I'm left with. And when that's my impression, it makes me wonder if I really want all that added turbulence in my life, it sounds nauseating. Afterall, marriage is not a command, it is an option according to the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 7. Some people portray marriage as if it is a trial that you volunteer for. They speak of marriage as if it is God's instrument of torture to make you a better person. However, I'm not convinced that that was God's intent. If that's the case then it seems like some sort of nasty prank. I always thought it was supposed to be a blessing. Nevertheless, life presents plenty of character-building trials whether or not you're married.

I wonder if marriages are failing because many are unclear about the point of marriage. If we don't know the vision, then we don't know the goal, and we have no reference for success. And at that point, we reduce marital accomplishment to the number of years a couple stays married. Once again, we only consider a marriage to be a failure if divorce happens. And again, that criteria seems funny to me because we wouldn't evaluate the excellence of someone's life simply based on how long they managed to stay alive. To be fair, relationships are difficult to assess on paper. We like our numeric systems. And so we measure relationships using years as a unit. That way we can put in into Excel and add it up and graph it.

Be that as it may, this brings me back to my initial question: What is the point of marriage? I have some thoughts of my own, but I want to leave it up for discussion. . .what do you think? Is it to help us understand Jesus's love and commitment toward the church? Is it to help us serve God better? Is the point to have sex and "be fruitful and multiply?" Is it to make us happy? Is it a self-improvement method? Is there something else to it? In addition to my first question, what do you think God deems as a good marriage?

What Do You Think?

Last night, a group of us were talking about dating and marriage. It's always a topic where everyone has something to offer and something to learn. I learned that a girl wants a guy to tell her right away if he is at all interested in her. That was news to me, I guess I always thought that I had to have my feelings clearly defined and my intentions mapped out before having that talk. But apparently I was wrong.

It's curious to me that even though dating and marriage are such a big deal, God didn't give us a whole lot of instructions about the whole thing. There is so much left to the imagination, so many questions unanswered, so much room for so many mistakes. We are like children playing with sharp objects. How do you know who's right for you? Is there one right person for you? How do you know if you're in love? What's the right way to go about dating? What's the difference between "pursuing" someone and stalking someone? Most people have passionate opinions about all of this, and its difficult to separate fact from fiction.

Recently, something shifted in my heart and I think it's good. Something settled. It dawned on me that I've been looking for someone that doesn't exist. This whole time I've been looking for a girl who's perfect. I've never met her and I never will because nobody's perfect. And the more I think about it, it would be a terrible idea to marry someone who's perfect because it would make me feel like the beast in the relationship. And why should I expect that other person to be perfect when I'm not even close? I've realized that I've had a double standard. It's actually quite selfish, come to think of it.

Anyway, rather than killing the romantic inside me, I'm forcing him to look long and hard at the real world. It seems like we've bought into the idea that being "in love" is initially the most important thing for developing a satisfying relationship. But I'm beginning to question that whole concept. I'm not sure that it's real. What if falling in love is not like winning the lottery or being struck by lightning? What if falling in love really is a choice? What if it is something that you invest in and work at and master?

We live in a culture where we think we are always the victims and we are always shifting the blame. Especially when it comes to love and relationships. We see love as something that happens to us. And so we wait for the day when the stars align and we are kissed by a love that wakes us from our slumber. But maybe it's within reach, maybe it's not somewhere out there but maybe it's within us. Maybe it's not something that you wait for, but maybe it's something that you work toward. And maybe it has less to do with the other person than we think. It's funny how each one of us think that we are the main character in our love story, and we just assume that the other person will be glad to play a supporting role. It's interesting how celebrity marriages don't look all that different than normal marriages. Everyone's got a celebrity complex in some way.

These days I try to imagine myself married to this or that girl. God sometimes gives me a glimpse of a possible future. But often times it's not too far removed from the present. It seems that the present is a peephole to the future. In the realm of relationships, I take a close look at my friendship with a particular girl. If there is frustration or confusion or drama in the friendship right now, then that will most certainly be a liability in a future marriage. It's not anything that we couldn't work out but it's just good to be aware of those things beforehand so that I know what I'm getting myself into. On the other hand, if there are special blessings about our friendship right now, then those would also carry over into our marriage.

I've been weighing which is more valuable, peace or passion in a relationship. Peace in the midst of all this chaos is so beautiful it's haunting. When there is peace, you just know that God is there, the One who calms storms and silences demons. I think if I had to choose between peace and passion then I would choose peace in a relationship. Maybe that's not a popular choice, but I've never really trusted the majority vote. Not that I don't want passion, I do. But feverish passion has never been a reliable compass for me. For me, the peace of God has always fullfilled its promises. It seems like all the good marriages have lots of peace and all the bad ones have lots of passion. Often, what begins as a swooning blaze ends up burning down the house. I've never heard of peace doing any damage. For the record, I love passion and I consider myself to be passionate. Actually passion comes easy for me. But peace is something that is harder to come by, and that's why I want it.

To Wait or to Date? That is the question

I'm always surprised to find out who reads these crazy blogs. It includes everyone from those who are single to those who are married to those who are divorced to those who are well-acqainted with the status of "It's complicated." I've also recently learned that I have readers from Japan, Indonesia, and Brazil. So apparently I've gone international, but I won't let myself get a big head, mainly because I still want to fit into my favorite hat. It's a good hat. One time I was driving down the freeway and it blew out of the window. So I pulled over and played Frogger with the high-speed traffic in order to retrieve it. I also think it's funny when my friends tell me not to include our conversations about love in my blogs. They fear the power of the blog, and rightly so.

Anyway, we all have something in common. That is love. What we also have in common is that we are all wide-eyed students when it comes to love. It's something we yearn for and yet we are never quite sure exactly what it is. We are all discovering love. Most of us know that we want love, and yet since we don't fully know what it is then we don't know what it is that we want. The problem is that love gets bigger as you get closer to it. There are no experts, except for God. I think I would have to be God in order to understand love. An attempt to define love is an attempt to define God. You can't do it.

I know so many singles who are praying for a relationship. It's fascinating how we singles are the answer to our own prayer. If we all just paired off then the problem would be solved. But I know that it's more tangled than that, because we all have been taught that there is only one right person for us somewhere. I'm not sure where we got this information, probably from Disney, and we all seem to believe it. And so we wait and wait and wait. Someone is waiting for me and I am waiting for her. We are simply trying to find each other, as if we are in a pool full of people playing "Marco Polo" but everyone is calling out "Marco!" and nobody is saying "Polo!" Waiting has replaced dating. We wait for our Eve, we wait for our Adam. It seems a little less than fair that Adam and Eve were perfect and sinless, and really they didn't have any other dating options at the moment. What an easy decision! It was a classic case of Adam looking at Eve and saying "Me Tarzan, you Jane." But we continue to hear the horror stories about marriage and how catastrophic it is when two people are wrong for each other, and so we wait and wait and wait. Everyone is telling us to wait, but they don't really tell us what we are waiting for and so we wait and wait and wait. At the end of the day it feels as if you've been stood up by a stranger. It feels like waiting for a bus that you don't know the number of, and you don't know where it's going, but somehow you're supposed to know it when you see it and get on before the doors shut. And the buses just keep huffing by as you wait. There are those of us who feel like we've waited this long, so why not wait a little longer? Just in case. And so we wait and wait and wait.

It sounds like I'm chiding waiting, but I'm really not. It is a Biblical concept to wait on God and it an extremely wise thing to do, especially when it comes to marriage. I'm simply commiserating. But it does seem like anything that God calls us to is ultimately a step of faith and obedience and the conditions are never perfect, it's always a bit risky. With God, our obedience is not to be based on ideal conditions but on our trust in Him. And so I just want to challenge my readers as I am being challenged to yield my demands and ideals to the Lord and ask Him "Who do you want me to be waiting for? I trust You."

We are a generation that has grown up in very safe conditions, for the most part. Our culture has mastered the art of safe with all of its safety precautions. We are accustomed to the predictable, and the unknown seems to be off limits. Sometimes, I wonder if we're losing our sense of daring adventure. Somewhere deep within us there are primal instincts that only awaken to the occasion of danger and risk. Relationships are highly explosive and are to be handled with the utmost care. Dating will never be safe. All that passion and all those dreams colliding can do much harm or much good. But again, eventually it will involve a step of faith. And God will be the one calling out "Polo!" We find our Eve or Adam by seeking God. So we are not waiting as much as we are seeking. It is not idle time but an active pursuit of our First Love.

1 + 1

I know that life will change when I get married, but there are many things that I currently do that I will still be doing even when I'm married. For instance, right now I'm at Noah's Bagels drinking coffee and eating a bagel and stalking friends on Facebook. I think I would still be doing this even if I was married and my bagel would taste just as good. The only thing that might be different is that I would probably also be swapping texts with my wife, with lots of smiley faces and romantic innuendos and making plans and such.

I do look forward to the day when I don't have to have my antennas up anymore, on the lookout for the one, constantly asking myself "What about her?" When that question is settled, I will have so much more brain space, I think I will be much smarter. Yeah right. Most likely, I will be faced with more enigmatic questions about love and I will probably feel dumb all of the time. Whenever I've been in a relationship in the past, it's always been somewhat of an unsolved mystery, a hallucinogenic riddle. Right now, I'm not in a relationship and I do feel free. In a relationship, you do give up some liberties in order to have other liberties. But what is freedom? Being dragged around by only your desires, isn't really true freedom. That sounds more like slavery. Maybe, real freedom happens when you completely give yourself to someone else. That's how it works with God. You give up your life and you gain eternal life. You thought you were free before and then you realize that you didn't even know what freedom was because you'd never experienced it.

I marvel at how Jesus said that in marriage "the two become one." It's like you become siamese twins. Two worlds collide, two stories coalesce, two destinies merge. You become so intertwined that life without the other person doesn't seem like life at all. You find out that competing with each other is futile because you're both on the same side. If you win an argument then you actually lose in the end, because their loss is your loss. If you insult her, then you are actually insulting yourself, because you are both one. I pray for a marriage where we are fighting for one another, instead of fighting each other. It would be such a travesty if we used all of our passion and strength against each other, instead of combining our efforts to do wondrous things for the kingdom of heaven.

I have to admit, sometimes, life without love seems much simpler. But that is impossible. We love no matter what. If there is noone else to love then we just love ourselves more. But self-love leads to self-destruction, because true love is meant to be given away.

Pretty Woman

We sing a lot of songs about how God is beautiful. And how do I know that He is beautiful? Because He made men and women in His image, and women are absolutely beautiful. And that's how I know that God is beautiful.

It's crazy that most girls don't think that they are beautiful. And no matter how many times you tell a girl that she is especially stunning, she still has her doubts. I've heard husbands say that they have to tell their wife "I love you" several times a day and yet it's never enough to resolve their wife's insecurities on the matter. I read that women not only need to know intellectually that they are loved but that they need to feel loved. And if a woman doesn't feel loved then she will begin to self-destruct and then all hell breaks loose. In short, a woman who doesn't feel loved doesn't feel like a woman. And it all comes back to beauty. A woman's worth is tethered to her beauty. If a woman doesn't feel loved then she doesn't feel beautiful. And if she doesn't feel beautiful then she feels worthless. Beauty is of utmost importance to the psyche of women. That's why they are constantly swapping lines like "Ahh, you look so cute! I love your hair!" One girl told me that girls will settle for trying to be sexy if they feel like they can't be beautiful. The difference being that beauty is holistic while "sexy" is only external. And so they settle for a shell of true beauty. A mask.

Anyway, I can't help but see the parallels between us and God. It seems that most of us are very insecure about how God feels about us. His Word tells us over and over that He loves us, and that He demonstrated His love toward us. We know intellectually that He loves us and yet we don't feel it most of the time. So we doubt our God-given identity and we feel worthless. So what does it take to feel loved? To feel priceless?

Sometimes, I think that God feels obligated to love me, because He loves everybody. And so there is a part of me that doesn't feel very special if He loves everybody. Maybe, that's the struggle for women. Maybe, that's why they try to find unhealthy validation from guys. After all, it's the idiosyncracies in our identity that are longing to be recognized and appreciated. That's not always pride, we just want to feel known. Even though God sees women as beautiful, they struggle to feel uniquely beautiful. It's like their dad telling them that they are beautiful, for some reason it's not enough. They want a second opinion. So life becomes an endless beauty pageant with countless judges.

So, what exactly is beauty? Why is each and every iridescent sunset so beautiful? What makes the crooning of a violin so beautiful? Why is the poutpouri of Christmas beautiful? There is something that beauty does to our hearts that is difficult to articulate, you just know it when you experience it. It brushes past the senses like a ghost slipping through walls. And perhaps that is why so many women don't feel beautiful, because they aren't quite sure what it really is. But maybe, true beauty is simply a window to God. Wherever we see beauty we see a hue of God. God is not insecure about His beauty, He invented beauty, He defines beauty. And so the more we become like Him then the more beautiful we are. The Bible refers to the beauty of God's holiness. Holiness is awe-inspiring. So if we are resembling that holiness of God then we can also be completely secure in His beauty. And I believe that each and every person exposes a unique angle on God's beauty. We are not the same, and yet we all reflect different sides of the same prism.

With that said, men are wired to appreciate beauty and women want to know that they are beautiful. What a glorious design! But there is a chasm of difference between a woman allowing a man to appreciate her beauty vs. allowing a man to define her beauty. That is God's role, He is the aficionado, the appraiser. A mere man is never to be put in the place of God, in the place of Judge. What's more, I am convinced that only men who have tasted the beauty of God can truly savor the beauty of a woman of God. Godless men know nothing of divine beauty.