September 2, 1973 – September 2, 2012
Dear Readers,
Tomorrow, My Professor and I will celebrate thirty-nine years of marriage. Every year, on our wedding anniversary, I share with my readers an essential quote or a story about Courtship, Engagement, Love, or Marriage.
Click here to read the most important quote you will ever read on Love and Marriage, representing the sacramental aspect of marriage.
My story, It Began With Roses, highlights the romance of love and courtship.
In Not a Word, I share with my readers the humor within a marriage.
Sometimes marriage is a serious, solemn commitment, which I describe in Unsung Heroes.
Marriage is sacred but it is also mundane:
“For all its joys, any intense friendship or marriage has aspects that can seem burdensome.
There is not only an investment of time, but an investment of self that is required for a relationship to exist and grow and flourish.
Even more difficult than the physical accommodations are the accommodations of identity: from the perspective of individual “freedom,” to be in a relationship of love will change us and cost us.
It will require us to restructure our priorities.
It may compromise our plans.
It will demand sacrifice.
It will alter the pattern of our thoughts and desires and may transform our vision of the world.
It’s not just ‘your life’ or ‘my life’ anymore — it’s ‘ours.’
Seen in this light, it can seem that staying at arm’s length and not engaging or investing would seem easier and safer — even if ultimately unhappier — than risking openness to love’s transforming power and answering its claims on us.
Sometimes marriage or other friendships feel euphoric and energizing: other times, they are tedious, empty, wearying routines, or just plain work.
The point is that being committed to any love relationship takes daily nurturing, daily effort, and daily practices that build it up.
Neglecting these will slowly break the relationship down.
Nurturing grudges or selfish claims instead will erode it and make us resentful of a relationship that now feels like a suffocating trap.
Kathleen Norris once said that married love is “eternal, but it’s also daily, about as daily and unromantic as housekeeping.”
It is through daily practices and disciplines, whether we feel like doing them or not, that the decision to love is renewed and refreshed, and the commitment of love is kept alive.”
[From the book, Glittering Vices: A New Look at the Seven Deadly Sins and Their Remedies, by Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung, Brazos Press, 2009.]
The vocation of Marriage is both sacred and eternal.
But in practical terms, we live out our vocation of Marriage in the daily and mundane.
May we be faithful in living out the vocation of marriage: “a long obedience in the same direction.”
Coram Deo,
Margot
Margot’s Corner 