December 12 is important because it is the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. It is memorable for me because in 2006 I did not get engaged on December 12. For the record, I did not become engaged on any of the other days in 2006, but December 12 is notable because the man with whom I was madly in love asked me to marry him.
I cannot remember what I said in reply, but it was not “yes.”
Nothing hurt more than the thought of losing him, but I was not ready to commit to marriage. I had practical concerns, emotional insecurity, and overall trepidation. This was not something I had spent my life planning to choose. I was not heartless, just insanely set on being objective about an ultimately subjective choice.
This unintentional find only added irony to Josh's agony.
A few days later I jokingly declared that we could not get engaged until we talked through a list of questions to ask before getting engaged. Josh’s response was “alright then, let’s do it now!” I could not find just one list that covered “everything” so I compiled lists until there were multiple pages of questions. We printed them out and spent hours going through each question. Josh says that he didn’t think it would get me to agree to marry him, but he thought it would show that he was serious about making it happen.
Praying outside another church during Josh's visit.
Josh returned home without an answer, and I decided to set aside the Christmas season for praying about the decision.
At mass on Epiphany I realized that it would be alright to become engaged based upon what I knew at the time. I did not know enough, and we were not yet close enough to become married, but that is what engagement is for. It was mostly pride and fear that drove my desire to be so very certain before I would risk engagement. Most importantly, engagement was what Josh needed to indicate the seriousness of our commitment to work out the things that separated us from marriage. I could handle that.
It took months of “engagement” before I really knew that the choice to marry was right. We were in the woods of a state park and I sat with my back to Josh as he read aloud from the book were working through together. Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross wrote her thoughts on the cross for her Carmelite sisters, but instead of drawing my heart back to the Carmelite monastery, they solidified my decision to marry. Josh read:
Just as the Lamb had to be killed to be raised upon the throne of glory, so the path to glory leads through suffering and the cross for everyone chosen to attend the marriage supper of the Lamb. All who want to be married to the Lamb must allow themselves to be fastened to the cross with him. Everyone marked by the blood of the Lamb is called to this, and that means all the baptized. But not everyone understands the call and follows it.
And I thought that there was no way that I could be fastened to the cross more firmly than with the bond of marriage. Perhaps it was not romantic, but joining my life with my Savior was my greatest goal, and it was clear that joining my life to Josh’s was the best way to achieve that.
Holy obedience binds our feet so that they no longer go their own way, but God’s way. Children of the world say they are free when they are not subject to another’s will, when no one stops them from satisfying their wishes and inclinations. For this dream of freedom, they engage in bloody battles and sacrifice life and limb. The children of God see freedom as something else. They want to be unhindered in following the Spirit of God; and they know that the greatest hindrances do not come from without, but lie within us ourselves. Human reason and will, which would like so much to be their own masters, are unaware of their susceptibility to be swayed by natural inclinations and so to be enslaved by them. There is no better way of being freed of this slavery and receptive to the guidance of the Holy Spirit than that of holy obedience.
In choosing to marry Josh I chose to give up my freedom to choose. I knew that there would be many times when I would wish for the freedom of being single, but I also knew that even those times would offer the opportunity to follow the path of Christ more closely. By the time Josh was done reading I knew that we would get married.
Now that we have said our vows, I no longer have a choice. I am married. But I still have to choose daily to fully live out my commitment and give my life for Josh’s salvation. I fail every single day, but I still seek to choose Josh, even though I no longer have a choice.
While I (surprisingly) do not experience the level of torment in love depicted in The Civil Wars’ “Poison and Wine” they express this idea far more beautifully than I can.
If you think that such an unhappy depiction of love is un-Christian, I suggest that you re-read Jeremiah chapter 20. Sometimes God wins and we just have to learn to like it.
I don’t have a choice but I still choose you.
Today I am thankful for a lifetime to atone for my hesitance to choose marriage with Josh.
Thanks for posting this. I was SHOCKED when David proposed – we had only been together for about 13 months. Now that I realize that our engagement will have been over 3 years when we say our vows, I realize that we got to answer all of our questions before the wedding.
That sounds very similar to us. I didn’t feel like we’d dated long enough, but being engaged for over a year and a half allowed me plenty of time to “catch up” and even wish that we could be married sooner. I hope that the rest of your engagement flies for you as well!
Hmmm… I want to post a very thoughtful comment to reward your sharing such heartfelt information… I just don’t have anything to say but am feeling very pensive after reading your post. How long have ya’ll been married?
Uh-oh. I have a feeling that I may have sounded too negative. We’ve been married for a little over a year.
Ha! No, sorry. You weren’t negative at all. I just have never felt those things you mentioned which is strange for me b/c I usually have some sense of what people are talking about, some personal experience with it. But not this time. I intrigued myself over this! LOL. Which is why I said I was “pensive”, in a thoughtful mode.
Haha. When I read “pensive” I imagined you sitting at your computer with pursed lips thinking about what I’d written and how it indicated that I should have become a nun instead of getting married, or some such thing.
Award for you on my blog!
http://disneyprincessc.blogspot.com/2009/12/you-might-have-noticed-ive-been-tad.html
I think this is such a beautiful post. I don’t think it’s negative, I think it’s honest. By the time Eric proposed to me, I was ready to say yes, (we were dating 1.5 years when he proposed, we had a 9 month engagement), but sometimes I think only because I happened to be going through a year long retreat in everyday life, going through the Ignatian spiritual exercises, which deals very deeply with discernment of vocation. (sorry for the long run-on sentence!) But, without the spiritual direction that was part of that retreat, I might not have been ready to, as you say, “fasten myself to the cross with Christ” by relinquishing some measure of my self-determination in getting married.
Very thoughtful post!
beautiful post. I wish more people would be more thoughtful about entering marriage. While it may make the engagement process less carefree and romantic, it makes marriage much more settled, committed, and ultimately loving.
way to think it through. i’m happy i now know such a success story.
i’m feeling all emo today and that song was beautiful! thank you for sharing!
This is a really intriguing post–and although the externals are different, it really resonated with my husband’s and my history. We were both terrified of the commitment, and dated for almost three years before he proposed–and it was another year before we got married. I spent most of my engagement freaking out, questioning myself, questioning the will of God, and in the long run, I said my vows in the midst of terror, making a choice, as you say, because I believed that my terror was not a warning from on high, but in fact quite the opposite. Ten years and three children later–on the far side of infertility, the arrival of a child with special needs–I know, as much as a person can know, that I am where I am supposed to be. Love is always a choice we make, even, perhaps especially, after we no longer have one. That might have been the best lesson I learned.
This is beautiful. It’s an honest depiction of marriage. It’s more than romance, it’s a grave and noble responsibility.