A marriage of three

(A friend's getting married so this stuff's just on my mind lately.)

A marriage of three. That’s the kind of kink I not-so-secretly yearn for. I’m a romantic at heart so let me explain by way of a saccharine metaphor that occurred to me the other day.

Who hasn’t been separated from their loved one by oceans or mountains, literal or figurative? I was about eight or nine years old, it was the end of the school year and the love of my prepubescent life was moving away at the end of the summer. Once the last bell on the last day of the last year of elementary school rang we would never see each other again and there was nothing we could do about it. It was inexorable like the oft dramatized parting of lovers at the train station—no amount of running along the loading platform with outstretched hands and arms will keep that monster of cold iron and fire from tearing your lover from you. We had to do something. Back then kids still rode their bikes around the neighborhood and every Saturday morning two kids convinced their respective parents to let them take a ride to the park on their own, a girl on a maroon ten speed bike and a boy on a purple BMX with white mag wheels.

The summer came to an end and the train left the station. I never saw her again. A kid’s heart is no less tender for its naiveté and I pined for her. I had no idea where she’d moved to or where she was. She was just out there somewhere. Nights had me staring out the window at the moon and the stars. Our situation seemed hopeless in every way—I didn’t know where she was and I had no means of contacting her—yet there was always the hope that she might be staring at the same moon at the same moment and feeling the same longing. No matter what, we had that in common. Sappy, but true. And so, I suppose all lovers, whatever distance separates them, can stare at the moon and know it is the same big ball of cheese (much like this whole story!) that their lover gazes at too.

But sometimes it isn’t trains that tears lovers from one another. We can pick up a phone or book a flight on Joe’s Discount Airline, but the chasms opened by betrayal, distrust and disappointment are not so easily traversed. That is the stuff that breaks marriages, families and lives. It’s exactly for that reason that I want a marriage of three so that, like the moon for forlorn lovers, we may have a foundational rock we both cling to no matter what shakes our marriage. The moon, though, is a mere dumb rock, probably more valuable were it made of cheese than it is as a silly symbol! The rock I want to build my marriage on is Jesus. Separately and before we are married we must both believe that he is Lord—of everything, including our hearts. I know that I could go out tomorrow and start a relationship with this or that woman and I could probably talk an engagement ring on to her hand eventually, but because I strive to make Jesus Lord of my heart I’m waiting for the one he’s already chosen for me. That way, when we are separated by oceans and mountains, literal and figurative, we may stand strong and believe that our marriage was ordained by God and he will be faithful to preserve it. How, then, can man put asunder what God has joined together?

Epilogue:
What happened to that little girl I mentioned earlier? I looked her up many years later. She became a beautiful and intelligent woman, a scientist who studies the very moon and the stars I used to stare up at. *sigh* It might have been a storybook ending, but I’m afraid the story goes no further. Though she hadn’t changed her name, she was newly married when we wrote one another.