The Love Behind the Anniversary
Forty years ago, Bruce yelled across North Boone School Road, “Will you marry me?” “Yes,” I shouted back. A shelf cloud hung low in the distance.
You couldn’t have found people more different. He’s quiet, a genius with his hands. I’m a talker, a writer, up in her head. His mother hinted I was too intelligent. (She was blind to his smarts.) His pastor held his breath, but married us, nonetheless.
Instead of spouting cliches about a long marriage, let me tell you a bit of the Lindworm, a story Martin Shaw tells in his Courting the Wild Twin. Two boys are birthed. First a serpent, who slithers away. Next a beautiful baby boy. The serpent insists he marry before the beautiful boy. But he slaughters every bride sent to his chamber.
After a wild, old woman counsels a young woman to make twelve nightshirts, embroidering each one near her heart, she says, “I’ll marry the serpent.” When she enters his bed chamber, he bids her take off her nightshirt. “If you take off your scales,” she replies. They do this twelve times. At the end he is a pale, gelatinous mess. She scrubs him with a brush. Imagine the pain.
Shaw writes, “As dawn approached, finally there was a man in front of her, with the face of someone sent into exile long ago. Someone with an ordinary beauty, she would love her whole life” (113).
And that’s how it’s been for Bruce and I.
I’m Katie Andraski and that’s my perspective.
If you’d like to hear me read this at the original post, on WNIJ, our local NPR station, click here.
Advice I Gave to an About to Be Married Couple at their Wedding.
I thought about leaving this WNIJ Perspective as it is but then decided to add the words that I gave a friend and her husband when they asked me to conduct their wedding. (That will be the first and last time I play minister because I found the legal stuff intimidating among other things.)
The scripture we chose is from St. Paul’s letter to the Romans chapter 12 verse 9. “Love must be sincere. Detest what is evil; cling to what is good.”
And now for my wisdom, which comes from being married to Bruce for 36 years. (The wedding was three years ago.) Even though we are very different people, we have stepped into happiness, into quiet conversations. We have accepted each other as we are, not the people we wish we were. We have seen the best and worst of each other. And that love has crowned us with beauty. May it crown you both as well.
These promises–to have and to hold, for richer and poorer, in sickness and in health–will provide a cup that will contain your ever-deepening relationship that will be richer, deeper, wiser in twenty/thirty/forty/fifty/sixty years.
These promises will stand you in good stead when life gets hard, and it will get hard. But it will also be glorious in the joys of personal accomplishments, restful vacations, and those quiet days that you spend building your life together. Remember this hour when you feel like chucking the relationship. Remember when you said, “I promise my darling. I promise my beloved” to stay committed. Remember you spoke these vows front of your friends and families.
Anthony Powell, author of Dance to the Music of Time told a writer friend that a secret of a successful marriage is not to talk too much because you can go round and round, arguing, getting nowhere except a deep hole ringed with bitterness. And please, please, please don’t insult each other in the heat of disagreements. Insults can burn through your love like a hot coal that doesn’t flame out. Avoid arguing just before bed. A good night’s sleep can ease a lot of trouble and give you both a better chance at talking. Sometimes it’s best to stop the conversation when you are too riled up. It might be good to shut up and listen.
Fred Luskin in Forgive for Love says, “Telling our lovers that we do not like their unkind words is one thing—in fact this can be helpful to defend ourselves and provide good boundaries if we feel insulted—but it is less useful to tell friends how insensitive our lovers are or to accuse them of insensitivity.” (200 – 201).
Though, sometimes it helps to vent, when pouring out your anger would be too damaging to your marriage. A friend can sop up those emotions and steady you, so that you can return to your spouse and set boundaries. Seek people who are friends to your marriage.
But I’d like to add, not having friends to vent to, has strengthened our marriage because I’m not releasing my anger. When we can be honestly angry, and say what we need to say, not with insult, Bruce and I have both adjusted.
If your mind circles like a broken record, skipping over the same scratchy fault, say something like “God bless my husband. God bless my wife.” If you want to keep God out of it, use the Buddhist’s wish: “May my husband be happy and healthy. May my wife be happy and healthy.” By doing this, you lift the needle off the static. You give your mind something other than rehearsing the hurt to think about. You toss goodness into the air that will eventually circle back.
If you step into a rough patch that is like walking through a wet, plowed field, keep walking. Think about the good times you spent together. Meditate on the radiance that drew you together. This pushes light into the darkness between you and will allow for reconciliation and forgiveness. But it may take time. It may take tears. But you will step onto the road, your feet quietly chatting with solid ground.
When anger locked us into grumpy silence, I needed to hear Bruce’s voice, so I pulled out The Divine Hours and asked him if we could speak morning or noon or evening prayers because I wanted to hear his voice. Sometimes we would read them on the way to work. They are safe and uplifting and human and set our minds on good things, on human things such as “Awake lute and harp I will awaken the dawn.” Or “In the evening and morning and noonday I will complain, and lament and he will hear me. He who is enthroned of old will deliver me.” These prayers have invited the Master of Love into our relationship. They have pushed light into the darkness between us. I hope you try them.
In an Utne Reader interview called “The Work of Oneness,” Bo Lozoff says, “Marriage can be a sacred tool for helping you transcend conditional love. Your partner has seen not only the best that she fell in love with, but also the worst, and she still loves you. And the same is true for you. This is the whole love which allows us to say, ‘I love you because you are, not because you are good to me. I’ve seen all of you and I love you.’”
You might be asking why would we want our marriage as a sacred tool? Because love becomes more than celebrating each other’s bodies, doing the dishes, going to work each day or watching the sunset. It becomes a holy quest to become a being radiant with light and goodness. That kind of love draws beauty from each of you and pushes against the chaos of modern life. As Bruce Cockburn says, in his song, “Lovers in a Dangerous Time,” “Lovers open to the thrust of grace. Kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight.”
Say “I love you” frequently. Hug often. We fall asleep and wake up to each other’s bodies even when we’re aggravated.
Say thank you even for those tasks you expect the other to do.
Take time off from work. To be together. And yes to be apart. Time alone can restore your souls. Time together can restore your love. Play.
When Bruce and I got married our officiant said that Jesus would go with us. My aunt giggled when she heard that, wondering if we could stand Jesus watching over our bedroom even though sex was God’s idea and his delight. But I remembered how I stretched out on a hill outside of Builth Wells, Wales and looked at a view not unlike the stretch of road west of Freeport. A hawk hovered nearly parallel to me, a hawk, a sign of Christ, who folded his wings, took on the form of a servant, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow. I’d been homesick even though I was home until that afternoon. I realized that the maker of that beautiful land went with me as I headed back to the US. From then on, I was able to make a home wherever I was.
I share this because Christ comes with you into this marriage whether you recognize His presence or not. (It’s better if you recognize Him, finding Him in the fullness of life.) He has made you in his image. As Gerard Manley Hopkins says, “I am all at once what Christ is, since he was what I am, and/This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,/Is immortal diamond.” This is a God who knelt down and washed his disciples’ feet, including his betrayer. His fullness fills the earth.
He is present and close like the air you breathe and the one whose love is patient and kind, who can show you how to love the radiant glory and rich dark, earth that are you—my beloved and my darling. Go with God my dears. Go with God. “Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us…” (Eph. 3: 20, ESV). Amen.
