There is a clinician that I like to listen to and she says something like, Show me the way you were loved and I’ll show you the way you will love. I could have used that tidbit when I first got married.
Our parents should have something to do with getting us prepared for life, relationships and in most cases, marriage. When I took on the parenting role, nobody gave me a manual or any real tips on what I should be doing for the first years with my wife and then the years with our kids. For whatever reason, I just took it as it came and made the best of it.
Marriage for me was about me and my wife. Hurl anything you want at me at this point, I think I can take it. For Debbie, it was more about family. She was right and I was wrong.
I don’t have the time or the energy to blame my parents, nor Debbie’s parents. They did the usual, food on the table, roof over our heads and so on. My father taught me some work and craft skills and took me into the woods on adventures, and invested in my scouting experience so that I had a lot to fall back on as I joined the Army. My mother not nearly as much, but she was not bad or anything like that. She often worked when I was home and so I was left with my father. It sounds funny perhaps, but I was basically left alone, even abandoned, all though I had two parents around.
I tried to ask my father one time about how to date a girl. He never acknowledged my question, nor put down the news paper, no response at all. That was the last time I asked him for desperately needed advice about how to interact or treat a woman. I was 12. I didn’t know it at the time, but he had 5 more years to work with me before I learned anything about women while in was in the army. And what I learned there wasn’t good.
My father did model good treatment of my mother and that has stuck with me to this day, but I did not learn how to make a good marriage and support a family from my parents.
Debbie’s story is even more painful. A father is supposed to treat his daughter as the greatest young woman in the world with timely praise and great encouragement. Not only did her Father not do that, but he did some terrible things beyond description to her. Her mom was powerless to stop it or didn’t know how I guess.
Debbie has many good memories of her early years in sports and with other family members and her two brothers. I enjoy listening to those stories, they were bright spots in her life that kept her alive and happy and eventually brought us together.
But parents in todays sense of preparing us for life, they were not very good at it. Pretty bad in fact, at times anyhow. So what is a 19 and a 21 year old to do when they get married after knowing each other for 3 weeks? Three weeks, 21 days, man, I don’t recommend that to anyone. Debbie and I joke about it these days, good thing we tied the knot quickly because we probably would not have agreed if we knew each other better.
Our reasons for getting married were lacking terribly and might have been completely wrong but we have come to appreciate each other in so many ways and give credit to God for His plan to bring us together. And keeping us together. I made too many mistakes which would have sent other women away, Debbie resisted the urge to flee and stuck it out.
Marriage is God’s gift to us humans. He offered us many gifts, but when a great marriage comes along, the world is a better, richer place for it. If you’re married, I hope you were better prepared for it than we were. We’ve had some tough times over the years. Much of our marriage has been somewhere between good and pretty good. Until this summer when our hearts drew close enough to each other to share our blood, I never knew how good our love could be.
Wherever you are with marriage, assuming you are the marrying type, some aren’t; but wherever you are, you can learn to settle into making your spouse and your family a healthy priority and learn new ways of making their lives better. Debbie and I walk each morning, go to the gym 3 times a week together, have some co-activities during the day or separate activities and get together for reading sessions every night. When the spring comes, I expect we will be back outside some more, enjoying the sun throughout the day and watching sunsets. Our spiritual life is maybe in the best place it’s every been, even after all those years of being a spiritual leader, but that’s another post.
Marriage is truly a gift from God and it has taken me many years to learn how to accept and treat His gift. More to learn for sure. Start earlier than we did and learn as much as you can about your beloved and treat them with respect and dignity, playfulness and spunk, courage and determination and put your whole heart into it. Don’t wait, do it now.