My parents married 44 years ago tomorrow. There was no beautiful, extravagant wedding, no dresses and cakes and centerpieces to worry about. Nope, just two crazy kids in love who drove across the Virginia state line into North Carolina and made do with a Justice of Peace. (In point of fact they were married later by a priest with a janitor and a school secretary as their only witnesses, but, hey, sometimes, I think God takes what we can muster and blesses it amazingly.)
You see, my parents weren’t “allowed” to get married. My father was the son of an impoverished Methodist minister while my mother came from one of Norfolk, Virginia’s oldest (read that as privileged) families, and my mother was raised Catholic to boot. The only thing my maternal and paternal grandparents could agree upon was that their kids wouldn’t get married, wouldn’t have a life together, wouldn’t have children. But you know what happens when you tell someone barely out of their teens what they can’t do? Yeah, that forbidden thing, it looks a lot more tempting.
I forgot to tell you, my father had dropped out of college to join the Navy so he could go to Vietnam. Actually, he was politely asked to leave Virginia Tech when he went bowling instead of taking his exams. Good girls from good Norfolk families, in those days, didn’t marry sailors.
My father was engaged to three women at the same time when he was 21, one of whom was my mother. You’d never know it to see him now, but he was quite the player. In the end he chose my mother because she was the one to break up with him when she found out about the other girls. He’s just that stubborn, and since then she has been his entire world.
My mother has followed my father to Guam, Japan, Europe, Texas, Florida, Arizona, Virginia, back to Arizona, then back to Virginia. In those 44 years, she has packed the house for numerous moves, suffered through crazy mishaps, and raised three kids much on her own as my dad travelled for business a lot, and while they have had their roller coaster moments, my parents still love each other madly.
Mom supported Daddy’s decision to finish both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree. When it was her turn to for her master’s degree, Daddy supported her. They each allowed the other to grow, and even in their tensest moments, the light of their love shown through. That love was always something we, their children, could count on, could know that they were one entity, one heart, and maybe most importantly, one decision.
I remember my mother telling me once that love was like a rosebush, sometimes it looks desolate and dead, but then the leaves and blooms return in the spring (or in Arizona, all year round). I think she was paraphrasing Alan Alda, but it matters little where she heard the philosophy, just that it stuck in her head and became her own. Because that rosebush analogy fit then and still today fits my parents so very well.
The rosebush is planted firmly in God’s soil, and it grows every year, shooting its roots further into the soil, growing stronger, more hardy, more able to withstand the storms that life inevitably brings. Some seasons the rose blooms themselves are abundant and fragrant and beautiful, and sometimes they come slowly, few in numbers, and tentatively into this world. When I picture love like that, even now, I can hope for a better tomorrow.
Had my parents listened to their parents or other naysayers, there would be no me, no big brother, and no younger sister. Had my parents listened, I’d imagine my father would have wandered this world looking shell-shocked and unattached most of his life. My mother, well, she’s a harder read, and while she loves my father with her whole heart, she is less sentimental. I don’t know how her life would’ve turned out; maybe she’d have entered into a loveless, “appropriate,” marriage that would have left her as empty and embittered as her own parents.
Now, obviously, I’m thrilled my parents stole across that NC state line. I’m happy my mother followed my father around the globe, but it’s not just for the sake of my own existence that I’m joyful. You’ve seen that scene in Jerry Maguire where Reneé Zellweger interprets the sign language for “You complete me.”? For my parents, that is the absolute truth. My mother would be lost without my father (probably literally. She’s got a terrible sense of direction.), and I’d imagine my father would find his life bereft and empty should my mother not be the core of his life outside of his relationship with God.
I’ve thought through this a lot, probably too much. I know people say they “stay together for the kids,” or their whole lives become about their kids, but for my parents it was clear to us (their children), practically out of the womb, that while our parents loved us, their marriage was the relationship that came first, the central sun around which all else revolved. I think that’s the way it has to be for a marriage and a family to grow strong, stable, and stay healthy.
You know already that I’ve been divorced twice, my brother, M, once. We didn’t learn that pattern from our parents. Instead, in our hearts of hearts we long for the permanent, God-intended, God-given, connection to another person emulating that with which we were raised. M has found that soul-connection his second time around, and M and J have been married, not always easily, for 13 years. But they adore each other, have raised three children together, and I doubt I could separate where he ends from where she begins.
I, well, I never have found that man Abba created just for me. I thought I had, obviously, because I doubt anyone goes into marriage thinking, “If this doesn’t work out, there’s always divorce,” at least I didn’t. However, it is a sad fact that, conveniently, you apply for your marriage license at the same exact court house where that one man or woman who knows nothing about you, your dreams and hopes, plans for the future, the secret language developed between you and your spouse has the power to dissolve all of that with their simple signature. And I’ve often wondered how anyone can believe that an ending that simple is possible?
I live my life every day, not in the past or what “should’ve been,” but knowing that a piece of me is missing, and will always be missing. When you take your Christian marriage vows, God sews you together: one being, one person, one life. When we choose to rip apart that seam that binds us together, for whatever reason, the seam never pulls apart cleanly. Part of my heart, my soul, myself to this day stays sewn tightly bound to those two very different men who used to share my life.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t wonder what B’s life looks like now, if I didn’t say I have true regret, that sometimes it feels like his new wife (whom he married very shortly after our divorce) is living my life. But none of that matters, because B isn’t here, chose not to be here once children were no longer a possibility for me. At that time we were so very young, so very immature, and couldn’t quite figure out how to turn to each other, hold on tightly and together face God offering up our broken hearts. Instead, B lives in a city to which I can never return because every street, every store, every monument reminds me of him and the life I thought we would share.
Honestly, my second divorce, I have yet to lament for any reason other than it broke our Creator’s heart. When a marriage is a mockery, then walking away with whatever shred of dignity, whatever shards of yourself you have managed to salvage from the devastation of the end of the sacred, is the only choice. And while it may break His heart, I don’t think God begrudges that.
I like being married because I grew up in a house where my parents liked being married. I like sharing my life with someone else, and I believe that’s what God intended. I’m good at being married, but even should I ever enter into another marriage, I recognize that there are parts of my heart I can never wrap up prettily and give to my new spouse because I willingly handed them over years ago for safe keeping to two men who discarded them like used tissues. I have open, empty places in my soul that the fabric of which two other people on this Earth carry with them every single step of every single day.
Those empty places, well, there is One that can reach into my being and touch my heart, fill it with light, and heal the wounds that still fester, have even abscessed into the empty spaces torn out by the simple, signatures of those two judges who, with the strokes of their pens, severed my life as I knew it – twice. There is no enmity in my heart for the judges (They only did as we asked.) or my ex-spouses, only an abounding sadness. It’s that sadness that I alone am responsible for turning over to the Great I Am.
Maybe someday I’ll figure out how. Maybe someday I’ll figure out how to have a marriage – to love as my parents love – every day.
The Unexpected Life 