Marriage: What's the Point?
This June, it will be 35 years since Ruth and I said “I do” at a beautiful church in Washington State. It was something we had looked forward to for a number of years and we were thrilled to see it finally happen. My father officiated, which was very special, and he eventually got to those famous words we all know so well, “…for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health…”. It was a wonderful ceremony, and it kicked off decades of marriage, in which my wife has been very long-suffering and put up with me and my nonsense.
Here's the thing: we had no idea what we were agreeing to. We understood that we had taken a solemn vow before God and that we promised to keep it, “until death us do part”. That we got. But the better/worse, richer/poorer and sickness/health part we had no way to comprehend. We were in our early twenties, healthy as could be, and had our whole exciting lives ahead of us, full of promise and hope.
We were hopelessly in love and infatuated with the other person. You remember. You would watch the phone, hoping and praying it would ring. Your heart skipped a beat the first time you held hands in a movie theater. Or that long-awaited first kiss. The insanity of it all; that lovesick feeling. There is nothing else like it.
Time marches along and that infatuation grows into a deeper love over the years. You work through the good times and tough times. You see each other at your best and at your worst. Nobody knows you better. Finances get debated, children are born, dogs adopted, houses purchased, and jobs changed. Now you are starting to get a better idea of what that vow meant, but through it all, you find that your best friend has become much more than you ever imagined.
So, am I just being nostalgic? To be completely honest, yes, I am being somewhat nostalgic, but it’s good to do that occasionally. Like when the dog barfs on the floor, the kids are chasing each other with markers, and you find out your car needs a new alternator – all at the same time. However, there’s more to my point.
The better/worse, richer/poorer and sickness/health depended on one thing that June day three decades ago: the vow. It was a vow taken before God, and if there is one thing that is almost universally understood, it is that you don’t break a vow taken before God. Even if we didn’t understand what lay ahead of us, we knew we just made a solemn vow. In the final analysis, we “got it” that day, after all.
That vow has kept us going, when life would have otherwise pulled us apart. Ruth and I will never claim to be close to a perfect couple, but it’s that foundation on faith and God’s direction for our lives which sustains our marriage and our family.
God instituted the very first family in the Garden of Eden, and He preserves and protects the family with a jealous love. When others seek to break down marriage or the family, or make a mockery of them with secular interpretations, it is ultimately doomed to fail. Without God in the center of the marriage, it all starts to come apart.
That’s why North Dakota Family Alliance does what we do: protect the biblical institutions of marriage and the family. I truly hope our children and eventual grandchildren will see that God is the center of our marriage, and that we fought to keep it that way, from our living room to the halls of Bismarck.
I know I just scored a lot of husband points for this email, but that was not the purpose. It was to remind all of us about why biblical marriage and the basis for our families are so critical. That said, it never hurts to bank a few husband points for when I do my next foolish thing.