Nineteen Could Have Known
Posted by Arwen Mosher in Marriage on Sunday, August 17, 2008 4:05 PM
When I think of someone who could benefit from marriage advice, I think immediately of myself on my wedding day. Bryan and I were married exactly six years ago today, when I was nineteen and he was twenty-one. We were sure we were following God’s will for our lives, and to that extent, we were ready. But nineteen, in our culture anyway, is still very young, and if I could meet my nineteen-year-old self now, I think I could give her some advice that could help her.
1. It is loving that leads to being in love, not the other way around.
I was as in love as a girl could be on my wedding day. I’d received enough wise counsel to know that this feeling would not last forever, and I was prepared to weather through the times when the feeling had faded, and stay with my husband no matter what.
I had imagined that acts of loving bloomed out of the feeling of being in love, and that therefore it would be natural to be more loving toward my husband when I was feeling more in love with him. As for the times when I was feeling less in love… well, I had committed to stay with him, and that would have to be enough.
I had mixed up the flower and the seed. As I learned, it is the acts of love that do not come naturally, but are born of a willful choice to love despite the inclination otherwise, that are the most fruitful. The seed of each act of loving my husband in spite of myself has bloomed into a beautiful and rewarding bond the strength of which I never could have imagined on my wedding day. His acts of self-giving love for me have done the same.
If my nineteen-year-old self had known to expect this, she could have saved herself more than one marital dry spell. Praise be that my twenty-five-year-old self has figured it out!
2. Opposites attract for a reason.
When my husband and I were first discerning marriage, I had some doubts. I’d imagined marrying someone like my father: someone who gets lost in books, someone who loves philosophy, someone who can talk for hours about ideas.
I am like my father in these ways, but strangely enough, I had never been attracted to any male versions of myself. I had, however, fallen in love with Bryan. Bryan, who can take more than a month to read one novel. Bryan, who is far more interested in mathematics and physics than in philosophy. Bryan, who would much rather be outside pulling up weeds in his garden than sitting inside wasting time talking.
I loved him, so I married him in spite of these differences between us. Six years later, I am very grateful that I did, for it is the differences between us that give spice to our life together. If I were married to someone as bookworm-ish as I am, we might spend all our time reading and forget to do anything! I am concerned with first principles but have little natural interest in How Things Work, but Bryan the engineer often explains them to me anyway. I listen because I love him, but I have been enriched in the knowing more times than I can count. And if I sometimes have to ask him to just sit and talk with me, I am happy that he loves me enough to do it even though he doesn’t really want to, and we are enriched by that too.
Vive la difference! I would tell my nineteen-year-old self, and then she would not have to wonder if all would be okay in spite of the differences between my husband and me. She’d know that they would bring us joy, and could anticipate that.
3. Marriage is not the be-all, end-all of happiness. It is so much more.
When I was a teenager discerning if I was called to marriage or the religious life, I secretly hoped for a vocation to marriage. The religious life, I thought, would be awfully dull, while marriage… marriage could make you happy.
I know better than this now. There is much joy to be had in fulfilling one’s vocation, whatever it may be. I have come across some blissfully happy nuns and, unfortunately, some not-so-happy married people.
Also, though, I have learned that there is no such thing as marital bliss, because there is ultimately no such thing as earthly bliss. True bliss is found only in heaven. There is joy to be had on earth, but it is never unmixed with sorrow. My earthly life is my path to heaven, and since marriage is my vocation it is a valuable and rewarding part of that path.
If I refused to embrace marriage as a part of my path to perfection I might still find some happiness in it, if I were lucky, maybe even many long years of happiness. Ultimately, though, my marriage would be much less valuable if it served only to give me happiness on earth than it is when it serves its true purpose: bringing me closer to God.
My nineteen-year-old self was looking to find happiness in her marriage. Little did she know it could give her something far greater.
What advice could you give your wedding-day self, or any young person, on the topic of marriage?
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