Lake House Weddings & Family

I have four sisters. This past weekend, the fourth and youngest of them got married.

Instead of doing the traditional wedding, where you invite every Tom, Dick and Harry that you've met over the last twenty years and treat them to a night of dining, dancing, and drinking on your dime, my sister wanted to do something smaller and more intimate. She rented a large lake house outside of Charlotte and invited the immediate families on both sides down for the weekend. The wedding would be Saturday afternoon.

Everyone arrived on Thursday or Friday, we spent the day on the lake Friday, Friday night we BBQ'd and hung out at the house, Saturday we golfed (the guys) or lunched (the girls), and Saturday afternoon we had the wedding in the backyard. Afterwards, we had a catered dinner on the back patio overlooking the lake. The party went into the night, and then everyone went home on Sunday.

Aside from it being a great weekend, it also reminded me what really matters about a wedding, and why we do them in the first place.

The first reason, of course, is that marriage is a visible reminder to us of Christ's relationship with the church. It reminds us of the covenant that God makes with us, through Christ, that he is going to love us because he loves us, not based on the deservedness of the beloved, but simply because he has decided he will love us. It is unbreakable; it is unending. Marriage reminds us of this.

When we have a marriage ceremony, this is what we are commemorating. This solemn service is a reminder of the enormity of the commitment of marriage. It symbolizes far more than we typically think; more of us would do well to take it seriously.

The second reason we have a wedding, however, is so that the vows that we make are done in the presence of witnesses. If it were just about the solemn reminder of what we are doing, the ceremony could be done in my office. I could put the fear of God into the couple. Or, perhaps a judge, with black robe, hidden behind a large wooden desk, raised up so that the poor couple is put into a submissive position by design. Yet it's about more than the reminder; it's about the witnesses. And these witnesses to the vows aren't just witnesses, they are people who, ideally, will actually hold the couple accountable to the vows that they have seen them make. They will remind them of what they said they would do; they will help them keep those vows when life is difficult. They will be there for them, supporting them, so that when life or marriage gets hard, there are other people to lean on.

Whittle down the multitude of people at any given wedding to the handful of people who will actually take their "witnessing" seriously; who, when the hard part of the vows (the worse, the poorer, the sickness) becomes the reality of the vows, will actually be there to make sure that the having/holding and loving/cherishing will actually be maintained until death does the couple part; you might find that it's not much more than the immediate family anyway. 

Well-intentioned people want to celebrate with the couple getting married. They are genuinely joyful at the celebration the couple is experiencing; genuinely desiring to honor them and help them on in their marriage and in their life. But life is long. Memories fade. "Witnesses" forget what they saw. There are only so many commitments we can be a party to witnessing before it is beyond our ability to hold them all up when the difficulties come.

It's fun to have huge parties, but sometimes it can overshadow what it is that we are actually witnessing, and why we are even there to begin with. It was nice to know that as I looked at the faces of the people witnessing this couples vow, they were going to be with the couple long after the party ended...

Three Keys to a Successful Marriage

A couple of days ago my wife and I celebrated our 14th anniversary. I made the wise decision to get married in the year 2000, so that every year forward it would be easy to calculate the number of years we'd been married. I figured that might be good for a few browny points later on in life. 

This time around, Christi asked me to come up with "three keys" to a successful marriage. She also asked me to keep it brief. I reminded her that "brief" is relative. A short story is brief in comparison to a novel.

In any event, what follows are the three keys that I suggested. Take note, they aren't necessarily "Three practical tips for a better marriage." Maybe there is a post there waiting to happen. But these are three keys to a successful marriage, by which I mean a biblical marriage the way that God intended it. I'm convinced that if we get the purpose and meaning right, it'll be much easier to get to the behaviors (practical tips) that will make for an easier time in your marriage. If we skip the purpose and meaning and go right to the practical tips, however, we might be happy, but not necessarily successful, in the Biblical sense of marriage. So that's my disclaimer. And here are my three keys:

Understand the purpose of marriage: it's about Christ and his church. Marriage isn't a "right". It's not a convenience. It's deepest and most fulfilling purpose is to be a living parable of Christ's relationship with his bride, the church. Yes, the first marriage between Adam and Eve also fulfilled a longing for companionship. But it was always chiefly intended to point towards Jesus. Other relationships can meet our desire for companionship, but it's only marriage that was given this sacred purpose. If you go into your marriage with any other compass, you are going to be disappointed and you'll play into the cultural language of "marriage", almost all of which is talking about something completely unrelated to what Biblical marriage is actually intended to be.

Forge your own path. The Bible says "leave and cleave". That is, leave your parents. Cleave to your spouse. There's a fine line between relying on your parents for support (which can be a good thing) and tying your new identity into their identity (which is typically a really bad thing). God takes two people from two separate households, and unites them together into one new household. That new household will have elements from each of the previous households, but it will be completely unique and distinct in it's character (just like having a kid). And just like you shouldn't live your life vicariously through your kid, or force your kid to make the exact same choices that you made, you don't want that to happen with your marriage. Forge a new path. Create a new household. Appreciate the past, but don't cling to it. Be willing to make mistakes. Be willing to do things differently than you did growing up. If you're still clinging to the way your parents did things like it's "gospel", you're probably not ready to be married. It's great to have Mom & Dad involved in your life, especially when you have kids! It's not so great when they begin to get involved in your decision making process. It's almost always going to result in either a) undermining your spouse and his/her opinion or b) leaving you feeling bitter when the plans don't go how you want them to, since you'll often end up blaming the third party, if at all possible. So be willing to really leave and really cleave.

Be Content. It's always good advice to be content, but it's even more important in the 21st century. Everywhere you look (especially on the internet), you can find someone telling you that you are doing life wrong, or don't have the right stuff, but if you did it more like them or had what they have, then you'd be happy. Most–if not all–of it is BS. I'm not saying don't try to earn more, have a nicer house, a nicer car, more kids, or whatever. I am saying that the way to be happy in the process of attaining all that is to be content even if you never get it. Getting a sweet new ride would be cool, but you'll have a much better life, and marriage, if you don't need it to be happy. Stop always thinking that you'll have more fun at the next stage of life, and just enjoy this one. So what if you can't afford a cruise? Take a day off and go for a hike or borrow a tent and go camping. You'll have a heck of a lot more fun than you would sitting around wallowing in self pity, and you'll find out that the real fun wasn't about what you were doing, it was about who you were with.

Well, that's it. I'm no marriage expert, but I could give you a pretty long list of examples of marriages that ended up on the rocks as a result of ignoring one of those three things above. Hopefully they can help someone avoid that crash landing in the future.