Weddings and Marriages

A minister once likened a wedding to making a mountain summit, and a marriage to a desert marathon. The wedding is on a set date.  You plan and provide for all kinds of elements to come together on that date -- venue, costumes, scripts, photography, transportation, food, flowers, starring and supporting roles. Party favors! Weather! Even if it was once a whole year away, that year melts and suddenly the day is right here. You have climbed and steadily gained altitude, and found things you needed, or needed to discard, along the way. And then -- It Happens!

After that, you are done. With the wedding.
But, with no set end date in sight, the marriage commences.

A desert marathon does not sound comfortable, so let's remember that there are many oases and camels and other wonderful resources already there, waiting for you.  There are many, many adventures ahead. But whereas the wedding date needed your drive and momentum and list-making to get there, the marriage needs something else.

It needs your ability to be in the moment and stay there, rest and abide there. It needs your flexibility. Understanding. Patient listening. Sometimes there are sandstorms. Sometimes you have to allow mysteries to remain mysteries until they clear up and you can move forward again. Sometimes what worked in your first ten years of marriage needs to change for the next ten years.

The marriage can endure as you both grow and change, and you can have a really good time with it. Maybe even a little list-making doesn't hurt.

I've been thinking a lot about marriage lately. Peggy's wedding is a mere nine months away. Mark and I will be celebrating 20 years married this October. And I've been writing the love story between Morris and Julie, pictured above. 

In their marriage, she raised four daughters in New England while he, youngest brother of many, had to spend most of every year at the family business in New Orleans. Boy, did they miss each other. They wrote more than a thousand letters to each other, letters that were saved. We get to read how much they loved one another. How hard it was -- and yet -- each of them grew into the adults they had to be. They often signed their letters, "I love you dearly." With twelve hundred miles between them, they made and kept a good marriage.