Chaplain's Corner

Recently, my wife and I celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary. As is true of every couple that marries – we had no idea what we were committing ourselves to – how could we? How could anybody? When a man and a woman make the decision to enter into the covenant of marriage, they are acting on faith and approaching the future with hope. Faith, because they believe that the other has their best interest at heart, they believe that the vows that are made are genuine and sincere and they believe that they will succeed at this relationship we call marriage. Hope, because as they look out over their future, they see promise, they see good things, they expect “bright tomorrows”.

As a chaplain I see marriage in all its glory and I see marriage at its worst. I see spouses that love through the worst, the sickest and the poorest times of their lives together; but I also see men and women, husbands and wives abandoned in their worst, sickest and poorest hours. I see husbands sit attentively by the bedsides of their wives, holding hands, affection evident in their eyes as life gives way to death. But I also see the lonely man, long ago divorced, lying on his death bed, without a soul to keep him company as life gives way to death.

As a chaplain I have performed wedding ceremonies for young, vibrant couples with their whole lives ahead of them and I have performed wedding ceremonies in a hospital room, knowing that the newly weds will spend less that a month as man and wife before their union is broken by death.

Over the years I have performed my share of weddings. Some of the couples didn’t make their 10 year anniversary before they threw in the towel and walked away in disappointment. But I have also sat with couples married 70 years who have weathered all of the storms of life and have been faithful to their vows. Now I am no marriage counselor, I leave that work to people far more skilled than myself; but I have learned a few things about marriage over the years, from my own 40 year experience and from others who have tried and failed as well as others who have succeeded in grand fashion. On this eve of my own anniversary I thought I’d reflect on a few of the things that I have learned.

I’ve learned that we are all and we always will be people in process. The person you and I married, you and I, all of us are changing, constantly changing; becoming, always becoming and this process is endless. Sometimes it happens in small incremental ways that we hardly notice and other times the changes come fast and furious and leave us with our heads spinning. But it is impossible for us not to be changing all the time and it is unreasonable for us to hold that expectation for another.

I have learned that love has the capacity to overcome every disappointment. You see, disappointment is the result unrealized expectations. If we are honest with ourselves we seem to always hold expectations of the others in our life that are go unrealized. When Paul writes that “love never fails” one of the implications is that love does not allow disappointment to erode one’s commitment to be faithful to the other. This is precisely why the traditional vows state marital partners will love for better or worse, in sickness and in heath, for richer and poorer till death do us part. These vows anticipate disappointment, they acknowledge that our expectations of one another will not be realized as we envisioned, and they call us to commit to moving beyond our disappointment led by the desire to love the other more powerfully than we love ourselves.

I have learned that God designed this relationship for endurance, not for happiness. I think this is one of the greatest follies: that the purpose of marriage is to make me happy. There could hardly be an idea further from the truth. Happiness requires pleasant “happenings”. When the “happenings” of life are not pleasant, happiness evaporates. Most couples don’t make it though the wedding day without something unpleasant happening and experiencing unhappiness. This is not an indictment of their love, it is fact of life: unpleasant things happen. The development of endurance requires that we seek joy instead of happiness. They are very different things. Unlike happiness that is dependent on pleasant “happenings”; joy can exist in the presence of the most unpleasant happenings. Joy, unlike happiness, is the existential experience that comes from trusting that God is in control, so no matter what happens, I need not be unsettled. Joy is the experience of God’s presence and grace that enables us to say authentically from our heart, “It is well with my soul”. As we learn to experience joy, we develop the capacity to endure the hardships and disappointments of life and as that happens our character develops and with the development of our character, our capacity to love richly and deeply also grows.

I have learned that God intended marriage to be a context in which we come to recognize the depth of our need for his mercy and grace. Most couples go into marriage believing that they can love well and long no matter what. But we all learn in the context of marriage is that we are not equipped to love as marriage requires, we need mercy and grace from God to make it in this life long commitment. We need God’s mercy as we so often fall short of fulfilling the commitments we make to one another on our wedding days. We need God’s grace because all that is required to be faithful to the vows we make is far beyond our own resources, we need Divine intervention and the wonder of wonders is that God longs to provide the mercy and grace required for us in our marriages.

I have learned that a lot of the things I once believed were big deals, really are quite insignificant. When you covenant with another to love through the thick and thin of life, in time you come to realize that many of the things that you once believed were huge issues, are really just small irritations. Compared to the desire to love another, some things just are not that important. What I want, pales in comparison with what will bless my wife. As I have learned that putting the interest of the one I love is critical, then my own interest become rather unimportant. Think about some of the things you and your mate fuss over – then think about the vows you made on your wedding day, those fussy things are pretty insignificant aren’t they?

The last thing I would like to share is that I have learned that love covers a multitude of sins. When I think of the number of ways that I have failed in keeping my vows to my wife, the number of times I have loved poorly or loved myself more than I loved my wife – when I think of how often my wife has extended to me the grace of forgiveness, I have a deeper appreciation for the fact that the self-less love that is described in 1 Corinthians 13 has been my experience and my gratitude to God for giving me a wife that loves me deepens. Let me end with those sacred words:

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.”