On Throwing Our Lives Away

  "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her;"

Ephesians 5:25-27

Last night, I slipped in the dark house and locked the door behind me.  The kitchen clock ticked sharply in the stillness: 1:30 am.

I groaned inwardly, remembering the bare refrigerator and those kids of mine who somehow always seem to require meals.  "I'll come back early," I had said. "I'll hit the grocery store."  He hadn't responded, but I know what he must have been thinking: "On girl's night?  I won't hold my breath."

I tiptoed up the stairs and slid into bed after setting my alarm - that I then must have slept through.  When I crept down the stairs this morning, he was standing in a sun-spot on the kitchen floor, laden with grocery bags.  "Late for work," he mumbled, kissing me quickly and waving to the baby before heading out the door.  I peeked inside bags and found the essentials for getting through a day in this house with these kids.  Sacks full of love right there on the kitchen floor as the van pulled away, grumbling up the gravel drive.

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"Will you make me the happiest man in the world?" The music swells and breathless women lean toward the television screen.  A cliche these days, the words so many men speak in movies and yes even occasionally in real life.  The hallmark of the marriage proposal.  Yet the more I think about marriage and look at the state of it in our culture, the more it seems to rub me the wrong way.

Maybe it should come as no surprise that an institution that has become just another way to secure personal happiness and fulfillment finds itself failing at record rates.  I can't be satisfied by these false hopes and keep wondering when people will truly see what marriage was created to be and what it truly is.  I certainly didn't know, nearly 10 years ago, before that alter. In his proposal, my husband wisely did not ask me to promise to make him happy.  Perhaps he knew, even then, even when I didn't?

Getting married at 18 meant I likely had more than my fair share of advice from outsiders.  "Throwing your life away," was something I was strongly cautioned against.  It makes me smile now to think back on those well-meaning people, wanting nothing more than my happiness.  Especially now that I know that true Christian marriage makes no such promises.

Marriage is, has always been, set up to be a ghostly echo, a mirror, a reflection of Christ's love for the church.  And not the "Because you make me so happy!" kinds of love.  No, Christ showed us what true love is - true love is sacrificial.  True love is service.  True love is commitment and purpose.  Christ's entire message was one of personal loss for the purpose of eternal love.

It may not sound as romantic as "Make me the happiest man in the world!" but marriage is not about cheap thrills based on fast fleeting emotion.  It is so more than that.  If we could see that marriage is sacrificial living, perhaps our marriages wouldn't be doomed to fail at epic rates.

My husband makes me happy.  Who wouldn't love a man who brings groceries and lets her sleep?  I hope I make him happy, but I'm thankful that even when I don't, he doesn't see it as a breakdown in our relationship.  He's a man who know's what love is.  He's a man who "threw his life away" for me, just as I did him.  Every day that he works to feed our kids, every day that he overlooks my failings and flaws and continues in on this earthly journey with me, yes, even when I make him downright angry?  He is living out true marriage vows, the type that show the world what Christ's love is all about.  Personal sacrifice.  Eternal love.  Dying to self, serving others.

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