Legendary Marriage, Part II

Continuation of "A Legendary Marriage" -

All real marriages are made up of a mixture of what makes us human and what makes us divine. The triumph AND the tragedy. The poison, the disappointment, the occasional castration, the lie, an unaccounted for body or two, and just simple day to day life struggle. On the other hand though is the joy of creating new life, the shared laughter, the dream chasing, the passioned moments, and all the promise of a future untold.

Many examples of marriages in God’s word show us both sides to the story as well. There is no covering up the dirt, it’s there for you to see. Abraham & Sarah, Isaac & Rebekkah, Jacob & Rachel, and the list goes on. The sad thing about the Disney type fairy tales we dream of as young girls, or the adventures we imagine taking as young boys… is that the story never continues after “The End”, when the end of the book, is always the beginning of the true story.

I don’t know what your marriage looks like on a daily, or weekly basis… but mine often looks less legendary, and more lethargic. Less romantic, more rheumatic. We have always understood though, that the pages of our love story, have to keep turning. New chapters unfold. We don’t want it to be a short story, but a novel, a real body of work. So, we keep giving the writer material to work with. All love stories are a strange mix of tragedy, romance, mystery, adventure, drama, and for some of us, a little Science Fiction. I would like to share a few excerpts from our story with you…

For those of you who don’t know anything about me. My husband Brian and I have been married for 25 years and we have three boys. We are almost at that stage where it is just the two of us again, just one teenager left at home. We are a mouthy pair, the two of us… and we’ve created a mouthy group. Yep, we are just one loud, mouthy family. But if there is one rule that we have employed over the years in our marriage, it is this. We don’t go to bed angry… no, we stay up and fight! Yes. We are a “passionate” couple. Time has worn the edges off that, but we have experienced some truly legendary squabbles. We also enjoy just debating stupid issues… and as my gift to my husband, I would like to state now, for everyone to see, that he really is right, quite often. (he loves to hear that…)  And the Legend continues.

We, like many couples, are almost complete opposites of one another, and we have different ideas of how to do things. This gap has narrowed over the years, but, every day we have to adjust to those little quirks that drive us nuts about each other.  For instance, apparently, I swallow too loud. Brian, lines up his paperclips and stacks his rubber bands in a circle at the office, I like to move some every now and then just to send him reeling. I crack my eggs and put the shells back in the carton… not in the trash. Don’t judge me. Brian is like all men and can never seem to find anything in the fridge. By the way women, I don’t get how that hunter-gatherer instinct thing is working when men can’t find the margarine behind the milk carton. Maybe they are employing that whole, “becoming one with their environment” technique when they stand with the fridge door open, just staring into it, not moving. Are they hoping it will draw the margarine out of hiding?

Back to me. My husband has a small problem with my habit of hitting things that don’t move with my car…such as fire hydrants, signs, poles, mailboxes, his parked truck, my son’s parked car, or driving up on landscape boulders in the mall parking lot. Then there are times when I am so angry with my husband that if we were in Jurassic Park, and there was a dinosaur chasing our Jeep, I would kick him out….Don’t judge me!… and the Legend continues.

Herein lies the beauty. Each story is made up of twists and turns, and surprises… Just when you think you know where the story is leading…you turn the page.

When I am watching football with Brian and I agree with him that the ref made a terrible call, or when I help remind all our friends that BSU is over-rated (That was my 2^nd  gift, honey)…the legend continues.

When I’ve felt a rush of pride and joy watching him play endlessly and tirelessly with our boys over the years… the legend continued.

When he looked through his rearview mirror on that highway all those years ago, and saw the car I was driving flip and roll, and roll…with his baby boy inside as well…the Legend continued.

When I watched him lie helplessly in a hospital bed because his broken neck had him immobile and in so much pain that the tears ran down his face…the Legend continued.

When he got the call that his beloved mother had cancer, for the third time, and I was there to share the burden of my Braveheart’s despair… the legend continued.

When I tried to distance him with hurtful words, and he instead chose to call on his inner knight to fight for the beauty that he knew was inside me… the Legend continued.

And woven throughout is the miracle of these moments, when everything else falls away, and you discover again those same feelings, reborn again and again in a thousand different ways, that have always been there between the two of you, underneath, around and through it all….it is the unexplainable Legend. 

You see… we just have to keep turning the pages. We have a God who knew what he was doing when he placed the Hero and Heroine in your story. It was no accident. God writes the love stories. We have to trust that what He is creating, is more beautiful than it is from our viewpoint within the sentence we are living at the moment, with all it’s question marks and exclamation points...Because your marriage, and mine, will be a blessing. I thank you for your marriages. Whether or not you feel like they inspire. Whether or not you feel as though yours is a great romance… thank you for your marriage. Your story is unique, and creative, full of real life struggle and pain, real life victories and celebration. It is miraculous and mysterious because it speaks of

the impossible. It’s a real page turner! 

Our love stories speak of a loyalty and devotion that surpass the ability of mankind to do things on his own. They mirror a divine covenant with a Holy God. Our love stories illustrate that re-creation, renewal, and redemption are possible within the bounds of human relationships, because it is possible with our creator. This is all for the glory of God. For,THIS is what dreams are made of…. THIS is Legend.

A Legendary Marriage

The following is a "blog formatted" version of a thing I did for our Valentine's banquet at our church last year. I have felt so impacted lately by the marriages of some great couples in my life, and I just wanted to share this in honor of them. This will have to be a "series" as well because it is looong. I have issues with this. On the bright side, I cut my "Warning Labels" series to just 2 parts... so there is hope in this blogger's world. 

 

A Legendary Marriage

     I want to tell you some stories. Stories of fabled romance, mystery, adventure…and don’t worry men, there will be some “blood and guts” along the way to keep you entertained… I will tell mythical tales of wonder and excitement that speak of the love between a man and a woman, the knight and his damsel, warrior and his maiden. Tales of vows made, courage tested, battles won, beauty claimed. This is the stuff that dreams are made of. I will tell you the story of a Legendary Marriage.  

     “Legendary”, some of you know that my family kind of likes that word. We use it more often than most people… and we often use it out of context. It actually started as a game to see who could use the word the most in a conversation with a stranger. We like to refer to ourselves as “legendary” often, and we just like to say it. It rolls off the tongue so well...”legendary”… It really is a great word. But, what exactly, does it mean? It can mean, famous, well renowned, or it can mean, the stuff of legends… and a definition for legends, that I think applies appropriately is, “tales retold for generations but unlikely to be entirely true…”. And so, I suggest to you in this moment, that "Only time separates reality from legend".

     Let us look now at our first legendary story of love, and bring back the realities that time has replaced. The first story, is in the beginning…Come with me for a moment if you will…. On a journey. A journey back in time… to the first earthly union, to the first marriage, in it’s first moments of creation. When Adam first met Eve. Can you imagine the moment? Adam has just opened his eyes, and there before him is a beautiful creature. This woman, that God had fashioned just for him, from him. Imagine Adam laying eyes upon this strange, and yet, somehow familiar creature. And yet, hold the phone… Not so familiar creature…

Oh the wonder! The sight!

But, let’s pause there…and look through Eve’s eyes. She has awakened to the sight of a creature, who looks so familiar, and yet, so different. She is confused for a moment, and yet amazingly not… and then slightly troubled by the feral gleam in his eyes, and yet not. Drawn to him, and yet not. Oh, what to say, what to say… what to say? What is he thinking? 
     Back to Adam as our journey continues. Adam has taken note of the differences in Eve from himself, and is beginning to move toward her to introduce himself by exploring those differences, and immediately begins to name them (after all, that is his job). He is the official namer.

     Back to Eve –“I wonder what he thinks of me?” She checks her breath quickly...“Oh, he can’t see me like this, I feel as if this stuff on my head is too messy…”

     Back to Adam’s thoughts. "Touch, Beauty. Name".

     Eve. "Does he speak? Do I speak? I’d better be able to speak!" 
Alas, language has not come into existence yet, and what comes out is just a series of guttural grunts. Adam, having used his voice for naming animals, recognizes the noise coming from her mouth, but does not understand what she is saying… she begins making wild motions with her hands… and he gets more confused…and so… it begins….

     This my friends, is what was left out of the creation account. Oh, I know the fall from free love luau to fig leaves, was later, and sin entered the world then. But I am here to suggest that the minute Adam and Eve first met, there was a clash of two different human designs, that in itself was perfect. A perfect creation of fire and ice, that would mold and meld into a perfect union of one, through the power of a master-crafter. And the first Legendary Romance is born…

     What is it that is so legendary about certain famous couples throughout history and in myths?

Let’s look at some of the most famous ones with a realistic eye…

  Romeo & Juliet – the first love story most people think of and has become synonymous with love itself… But why? He thinks he loves some Rosaline chick, sees Juliet once and they decide to marry the next day. A couple days later they’ve both killed themselves because they thought the other one was dead. And to top it off, the play ends with the bad rhyme, “for never was a story of more woe, than this of Juliet and her Romeo”. Tragic.

Cleopatra & Mark Antony – More tragic death over the supposed death of the other (notice a theme here in many love stories)… tried to take over Rome together, the original real estate power couple…

Tristan & Isolde – NOT married… Tristan is so dumb he marries someone else just because her name sounds like Isolde… good reason. She turns out to be a liar and everyone dies of broken hearts.

Paris and Helen – From Homer’s Iliad. NOT married… Starts a war, people die. The movie lied, Paris abducted her and when Troy is destroyed she lives happily the rest of her life with her husband Menelaus…but that’s okay because Orlando Bloom was a real wimp anyway.

Napoleon and Josephine – fell deeply in love out of a marriage of convenience, but that didn’t deter adultery on both sides – he left her because she couldn’t produce an heir. Their love fell short.(get it? Napoleon was short! ha!)

Odysseus and Penelope – Greek pair. He dies at war, but she still refuses 108 suitors while waiting for him to return. He refuses everlasting love and eternal youth from a sorceress so that he might return home. The story does not go on to tell you how many times later she reminded him of “all the men she could have chosen”.

Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler – Frankly, my dear…. I can’t understand why he married her in the first place…

Jane Eyre and Rochester – Bronte’s famous tale of love between a rich man and his governess who are to marry, but wait, he’s already married!

Eloise and Abelard – a true story of a boy and girl who were secretly married, torn apart, he is castrated, becomes a monk, and she a nun.

Pyramus and Thisbe – Basically another Romeo and Juliet.. forbidden love, mistaken death, both die in the end.. someone really needs to wait and make SURE the other person is really dead before they off themselves… These tragedies are really more stories of stupid people who don’t know how to check for pulses…

Elizabeth Bennett and Darcy – Well… okay, this IS a love story… I mean, I’m sorry, it’s Jane Austen for pete’s sake. Sigh…

Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal – She was his “favorite” wife…and he built her the Taj Mahal, AFTER she died. NOT legendary.

Marie and Pierre Curie – Finally, a relationship that didn’t involve poison…Partners in love and science, they discovered radioactivity together…. now that’s romantic. I’m sure they had their melt-downs though…

And finally, my own addition – Wesley and Buttercup – the story ended well as it was written, but I believe the giant Fezzik moved in with them like a free-loading relative and made life miserable.

As you can see, some of the most legendary romances of all time were really full of challenges, pain, tragedies… Why? Because, “only time separates reality from Legend”. Can we see our real marriages from the distance that it takes, to be able to see the legend? 

To be continued.....