It’s your wedding day. You have all the emotions. All the planning you’ve done, all the dreams you have for the day, and all the excitement of the future you have with your spouse start coming to mind.
Maybe you’re thinking about a picture you want to make sure to get, a moment you are excited to share with a family member, or maybe you are so overwhelmingly exhausted that it has become hard to consciously enjoy (or even remember) the day at all.
In the midst of whatever happens in the beginning of the day, somehow you make it to your ceremony. You look into the eyes of your future spouse, and all the work you did planning for this day, and for this moment, becomes worth it.
When the ceremony ends, the pastor will likely say something to the effect of, “groom, you may now kiss your bride.” At that moment, you are one. All of your goals, desires, habits, dreams and annoyances become connected to the other. But you know what I remember someone telling me, just a few days before my wedding?
Even though, technically, you are “one” at the moment you are married, your entire marriage is actually a process of learning to become one with the other person. You don’t immediately know how to share your innermost thoughts, how to divide up chores, or how to respond in love to the other person when they are getting on your last nerve. You don’t know the moment you get married all of the kinds that are going to come up throughout your marriage that are going to test you, and that are going to make loving one another especially hard sometimes.
Perhaps this is why so many people I know who have been married for a number of years say that they love their spouse more now than they did when they got married. Now, I haven’t earned any kind of “gold star” in my marriage having only been married two years, but I do know that marriage is not easy, and that loving the other person is a choice. I do know and will forever remember what my dear friend told me, that marriage is about becoming one together.
I know that the process of becoming one involves both parties being utterly and completely surrendered to the Holy Spirit, allowing him to speak to our hearts and correct us in love when they say or do something that may be hurtful to their spouse. I know that becoming one means that we commit to learning to love our spouse in the ways that they most need, while recognizing and being open minded enough to understand those ways they need will very likely be different than our own.
Now, go back with me to the wedding day for a minute. Celebrate all the love that is shared with your spouse, your family, and all the people there who love you. The pastor has pronounced you husband and wife, you fly through a reception that lasts for hours but, for most of us, ends up feeling like five minutes. You go on your honeymoon, enjoying every moment as newlyweds, and then you come back to a quieter, less rushed around and exciting time: back to ordinary life.
It is not the big, extravagant, “social media post worthy” moments that becoming one is the most crucial or noteworthy, but rather in in the ordinary, quiet, seemingly inconsequential or even mundane moments. The ones that no one would think to post on social media or take a million pictures of. *
The moments where you are both exhausted, but dinner still has to be made, and the chores still have to get done.
The moments when you are driving in traffic and running late to something you were both super looking forward to. Or when one of you made the other late and now you have a whole car ride to deal with it.
The moments when you’ve both had a really long day at work and every. single. thing. your spouse is doing is starting to get under your skin, and now you have a choice: will I take my anger and frustration from the day out on them?
Becoming one with our spouse is a process, and, unlike our drive thru orders, seemingly lightning fast wedding receptions and Amazon delivery time, it does not happen overnight.
My prayer for all of you who are reading this is simple: whether you are single, desire to be married in the future, are actively planning your wedding or are many years into marriage, is that you may allow the Holy Spirit to continue the deep work he began in you when you chose to commit your life to him. My prayer is that this work will continue to cleanse and purify your heart in such a way that you will actively become a more loving, devoted, and committed person, not just to your spouse but to all those with whom you have meaningful relationships in your life. And, for those who are married, I pray that both you and your partner continue to be “rooted and established in love” as Paul talks about in Ephesians – love for each other, for your children (if you have them), and for all who belong to the family of God.
Matthew 19:4-6, Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate”, (NIV).
Ephesians 3:17b-19, “And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God”, (NIV).
