Tag: marriage

Looking Back to Go Forward

Chris De ManLeave a comment

 

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With all that spring and summer has been in 2020, for my family it has also been a season of weddings. Two of my sons made a covenant with their ladies as we laughed, cried, celebrated, and briefly pushed aside most of our pandemic thoughts while masked and physically distanced.  

Those wedding ceremonies were the culmination of much planning and re-planning. They embodied a great deal of compromise as we released more than a few wedding-day dreams. We also found ourselves in deep conversation, refining our understanding of tradition, ceremony, and the real and representative aspects of community. Even so, there was silver in those clouds of disappointment. I can agree with James that there’s value in trial. (James 1:2-4) I can also affirm that each day has enough worry of its own! (Matthew 6:34)

Not bound to weddings, discouragement was a frequent house guest this past year. It touched our desires for education, occupation, and financial stability. It would be easy, and some might say justified, to indulge in some self-pity. Commiserate a bit because things have been tough for all of us. But I certainly don’t need encouragement to feel sorry for myself. That comes much too easily. 

So what are we to do in these present and seemingly unending moments of ambiguity and anxiety? When there’s much we cannot control and each day threatens with setback, cancellation, and redirection? 

I received some help with those questions in the week leading-up to wedding number two. During the quiet of mid-morning God interrupted my fretting, prompting me to replay our family story of the past year. Doing so required reliving cycles of deep discouragement rife with tears, questions, and desperate pleas. But in my review of the past I saw points of light amidst the valley’s shadows. Divine illuminations that revealed a next step. And then another. In our faithful plodding from point to point we encountered many unexpected graces. To be honest, at the time some of those felt less like graces and more like unmet expectation. But taken in panorama, my look-back revealed an intricate and unexplainable pattern of a loving Providence!

So in the unsettledness of today, I’m reminded to remember. To look back as I go forward. To embrace a long-sighted perspective, acknowledging that life’s journey is not a beeline path from one good thing to the next. There will be seasons of struggle. And in this moment, which is one moment among thousands in a grand narrative, I must seek the Spirit’s help to calm my soul. To reflect on God’s presence and care in my every breath. To know that my God sits with me in the pain, whispering gentle words of acceptance and love. After all, He’s never left me. And He’s already been where I’m headed. That is a great comfort!

Whether re-planned weddings, kids in school (or not), presidential elections, furloughed jobs, protests or masks this season is over-ripe with opportunities for the people of God to bring comfort to societal anxieties, frustrations, and uncertainty. As followers of Jesus we should be listening, empathizing, loving, giving, and caring for all people. It’s our call and privilege to be inconvenienced for the sake of another. (1 John 3:16) Let us be known for delivering hope, offering the peace of Jesus who said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.” (John 14:27, ESV) 

Join me in sharing the peace and comfort of Jesus.

———————-
Perhaps this song from my favorite band will help quiet your spirit
and bring you peace:

Young Oceans – This Wild Earth
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTSh1Amkwx0

The Marital Bed

Chris De ManLeave a comment

The Marital Bed

Our bare legs glide
between cool cotton sheets,
instigating negotiations
to create a slumbering nest —
a cotton and polyester poultice
to draw away
the day’s exertions.

Deep exhalations
release soft sighs,
triggering warm nuzzles
and gentle touches.

Hands overlap;
we interlace fingers
in affectionate affirmation
of our sacred promise.

Fogged with weariness,
our bodies yield through
jerks and twitches;
the Sandman is here.

Celestial movements
shutter the day’s light,
gifting the hush of darkness.

Our embrace is benediction.

Copyright © 2020 Chris De Man. All rights reserved.

Delightfully Difficult

Chris De ManLeave a comment

Number twenty-two. The copper anniversary. Whoever designated anniversary themes must have figured if you made it to 22 you could risk giving a copper-themed gift to your spouse. Copper is great for circuit boards and statues, but as an anniversary present? Seriously, what’s a guy to do? I find consolation in my navigation around the “wax” theme of the 16th anniversary, as well as “feathers” for number 18. I propose we simplify and modernize. How about a, “dinner and a movie” theme for every year?

As part of our recent anniversary celebration, my wife moved a few wedding treasures into prominent view. Slightly more than arms-length from where I sit is the figurine that sat atop our wedding cake. Side-by-side in a convertible car sit a porcelain bride and groom – wide-eyed and pensive. They embody hope, innocence, and shameless dreams. Their faces evoke laughter and sunshine and the thrill of oneness. They symbolize humanity’s best sentiment for togetherness.

Yet veiled by the idyllic cuteness of our Precious Moments™ pair is something contrary to a fairytale sculpting of happily ever after. Our wedding cake couple has secrets. A close look reveals damage and scars. Here a chip, there a crack. Tin cans that once dangled from the car’s bumper have been ripped from their anchoring point. This marital duo is not as they were that January day when they nestled secure in a thick bed of white frosting. They’ve changed.

Such is marriage. A refining endeavor of being broken and changed.

In a recent reading of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, I attached myself to the character Levin. He’s traditional, stubborn, and idealistic. He’s a self-aware dreamer in tension with life’s realities. After some favorable twists of circumstance, Levin’s marital dream comes true as he weds his true love. Here’s Tolstoy description of Levin’s thoughts, still very new to his role as husband:

“Levin had been married three months. He was happy, but not at all in the way he had expected to be. At every step he found his former dreams disappointed, and new, unexpected surprises of happiness. He was happy, but on entering upon family life he saw at every step that it was utterly different from what he had imagined. At every step he experienced what a man would experience who, after admiring the smooth, happy course of a little boat on a lake, should get himself into that little boat. He saw that it was not all sitting still, floating smoothly; that one had to think too, not for an instant to forget where one was floating and that there was water under one, and that one must row; and that his unaccustomed hands would be sore; and that it was only to look at it that was easy; but that doing it, though very delightful, was very difficult.” (Anna Karenina, Part V, Chapter 14)

Easy is the story of that wedding cake couple with painted-on smiles and forever young features. Easy flowed our dreams of marital life, twenty-two years ago. Easy was the dress rehearsal.

Then we stepped into the boat.

And there we sit. She and me. Side-by-side in a weathered skiff upon life’s ocean. Happy and sore. Disappointed and surprised. Broken but joyful. And always dreaming as we paddle into the delightfully difficult.

Together.