19 Years of Ma-wage

I woke up 19 years ago at around 6 am shaped by a sense of loneliness. It wasn’t a somber and desperate loneliness, but a lucid and intellectual one. I knew that some hours later, I would no longer feel the weight of being in a foreign country alone–distant from blood and familiarity–but that God would put someone more glorious to remove the distance of familial bonds and re-create an entirely new bond through vows and benediction.I brought my guitar close–the thing that was always close–to tune it in preparation for a solo to my new wife that afternoon at our wedding reception. The whole morning was a flurry of feelings, a vast embrace of my history in preparation to merge into a new one.

I remember how much our youth blossomed on that hot Florida day. Our faces shined like a transfigured glory-cloud. It may have been the sweat, but I prefer to remember it as unadulterated joy that made our faces glow. We filled our emotional jars with a cascade of romanticism. We had read the entire Psalter the previous 150 days leading to May 17th, 2003. We had songs and hopes to fill our imagination. We were deeply in love–eager to begin life together enjoying the gifts and gratitudes that accompany holy matrimony.

We entered into marriage wholeheartedly with the commitment of two innocent souls, saturated by Jesus and undeniably hungry to put our worldview into practice. We were young, restless, and pre-formed, preparing to shape our desires and longings with new histories and happiness.

And all of that was enough. We possessed little. But we possessed the right things. So, we walked that afternoon to the church building “reverently,” as the ancient wedding words say. We looked straight into the minister’s eyes and acknowledged the importance of our words. We never once doubted the goodness of God and never once failed to see God’s faithfulness. I had come from a far country and now I was walking up to a new country with an altar and a priest.

19 years later, I look back on the genesis of our life together. I look back to the smiles of youthfulness uncertain about our next step, but confident in God’s good providence. Now, five children later, a few vans later, a few degrees later, a few hundred solos later, a few thousand meals later, a few arguments later, a few hundred acts of selfishness later (mostly mine), and a few million acts of benevolence later from our God, I am content in the wife of my youth. Her zeal for life, her untiring energy, and her conspicuous love of the good makes me a better man, a better husband, and a better practitioner. When Chesterton wrote that “Marriage is a duel to the death which no man of honour should decline,” it was a statement of value. We have both died many times and we have both been made alive in a hundred ways. Marriage is good. Work on it. Suffer well together. And never lose the reverence which brought you to that sacred event.

“Many waters cannot quench love,neither can floods drown it.If one offered for loveall the wealth of one’s house,it would be utterly scorned.”Happy 18 years of matrimony, amor!