From a noisy but shallow brook to a quieter but deeper river
When over the years someone has seen you at your worst, and knows you with all your strengths and flaws, yet commits him- or herself to you wholly, it is a consummate experience. To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of our self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us.
The kind of love life I am talking about is not devoid of passion, but it’s not the same kind of passion that is there during the days of naïveté. When Kathy first held my hand, it was an almost electrical thrill. Thirty-seven years later, you don’t get the same buzz out of holding your wife’s hand that you did the first time. But as I look back on that initial sensation, I realize that it came not so much from the magnitude of my love for her but from the flattery of her choice of me. In the beginning it goes to your head, and there is some love in that, but there are a lot of other things, too. There is no comparison between that and what it means to hold Kathy’s hand now, after all we’ve been through. We know each other thoroughly now; we have shared innumerable burdens, we have repented, forgiven, and been reconciled to each other over and over. There is certainly passion. But the passion we share now differs from the thrill we had then like a noisy but shallow brook differs from a quieter but much deeper river. Passion may lead you to make a wedding promise, but then that promise over the years makes the passion richer and deeper.
Keller, Timothy (2011-11-01). The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God (p. 87-88). Penguin Group. Kindle Edition.
You Never Marry the Right Person
Commenting on Relevant Magazine’s excerpt of Timothy Keller’s book The Meaning of Marriage:
As we walk the path to marriage, it is easy to get caught up in finding the “right” person as defined by our own preferences and personal standards. This sets us up to become discouraged and disappointed when we enter relationships only to discover that the other person is, after all, as fallen as we are.
The world would have us move on at this point and keep searching for our elusive soul mate. Christian love, however, calls us to something higher – “Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8).
We should look for a person whose life demonstrates an active and growing faith – someone who loves God and others, someone who doesn’t practice sin. This is the kind of fallen and imperfect person we can grow with. Searching for something more will only leave us bitter, dissatisfied – and most likely, single.
When you first fall in love, you think you love the person, but you don’t really. You can’t know who the person is right away. That takes years. You actually love your idea of the person—and that is always, at first, one-dimensional and somewhat mistaken.
But the problem is—and you may be semiconsciously aware of this—the person doesn’t really know you and therefore doesn’t really love you, not yet at least. What you think of as being head over heels in love is in large part a gust of ego gratification, but it’s nothing like the profound satisfaction of being known and loved.
My wife has lived with at least five different men
“Without being bound to the fulfillment of our promises, we would never be able to keep our identities; we would be condemned to wander helplessly and without direction in the darkness of each person’s lonely heart, caught in its contradictions and equivocalities.”
Peter Baehr, The Portable Hannah Arendt (New York: Penguin Classics, 2003), 181.
Similarly, Christian ethicist Lewis Smedes wrote in Christianity Today about “Controlling the Unpredictable—The Power of Promising” (January 21, 1983).
When I married my wife, I had hardly a smidgen of sense for what I was getting into with her. How could I know how much she would change over 25 years? How could I know how much I would change? My wife has lived with at least five different men since we were wed—and each of the five has been me.
The connecting link with my old self has always been the memory of the name I took on back there: “I am he who will be there with you.” When we slough off that name, lose that identity, we can hardly find ourselves again.
Quoted by Keller, Timothy (2011-11-01). The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God (p. 83-84). Penguin Group. Kindle Edition. Bold emphasis mine.
Like everything which is not the involuntary result of fleeting emotion but the creation of time and will, any marriage, happy or unhappy, is infinitely more interesting than any romance, however passionate.
W. H. Auden, A Certain World: A Commonplace Book.
Quoted in Keller, Timothy (2011-11-01). The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God (p. 82). Penguin Group. Kindle Edition.
Marriage Vows: That Which Keeps Your Marriage Together
What can keep marriages together during the rough patches? The vows. A public oath, made to the world, keeps you “tied to the mast” until your mind clears and you begin to understand things better. It keeps you in the relationship when your feelings flag, and flag they will.
Keller, Timothy (2011-11-01). The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God (p. 79). Penguin Group. Kindle Edition.
G.K. Chesterton on Making Promises to Each Other
This blending of law and love fits our deepest instincts. G. K. Chesterton pointed out that when we fall in love we have a natural inclination not just to express affection but to make promises to each other. Lovers find themselves almost driven to make vow-like claims. “I will always love you,” we say when we are at the height of passion, and we know that the other person, if he or she is in love with us, will want to hear those words. Real love, the Bible says, instinctively desires permanence.
Keller, Timothy (2011-11-01). The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God (p. 77). Penguin Group. Kindle Edition.
Wedding vows are not a declaration of present love but a mutually binding promise of future love. A wedding should not be primarily a celebration of how loving you feel now—that can safely be assumed. Rather, in a wedding you stand up before God, your family, and all the main institutions of society, and you promise to be loving, faithful, and true to the other person in the future, regardless of undulating internal feelings or external circumstances.
When dating or living together, you have to prove your value daily by impressing and enticing. You have to show that the chemistry is there and the relationship is fun and fulfilling or it will be over. We are still basically in a consumer relationship, and that means constant promotion and marketing. The legal bond of marriage, however, creates a space of security where we can open up and reveal our true selves. We can be vulnerable, no longer having to keep up facades. We don’t have to keep selling ourselves. We can lay the last layer of our defenses down and be completely naked, both physically and in every other way.
The Vow
- Paige: I vow to help you love life, to always hold you with tenderness, and to have the patience that love demands. To speak when words are needed, and to share the silence when they're not. To agree to disagree on red velvet cake, and to live within the warmth of your heart and always call it home.
- Leo: I vow to fiercely love you in all your forms, now and forever. I promise to never forget that this is a once in a lifetime love. I vow to love you, and no matter what challenges might carry us apart, we will always find a way back to each other.
Source: jheiislove
