relevant

by Skip Johnson

Created on: July 24, 2009   Last Updated: July 25, 2009

Is Marriage Relevant, or Is It Nearing Extinction?

A while back, I heard an alleged relationship expert on a radio talk show say any relationship lasting seven should be considered long term. She wondered openly at those who stayed married for a lifetime. How did they do it? Did they fall in love with the same person over and over again? The expert was frankly baffled, and hadn't much to offer by way of counsel for those who desired to participate personally in such an unusual and increasingly rare phenomenon. Such a thing was possible, she mused, since there were indeed people who actually did it. How they pulled it off was a mystery to her, and also to her young adult listeners who phoned in to pool collective ignorance on the subject. Everyone wanted a "happily ever after", but most simply marked it off because it seemed unattainable.

When I was younger, I imagined passionate Romeos and Juliets were humanity's great lovers. The longer I lived and the more I saw people struggle to form lasting relationships, the less impressed I became with those breast-heaving balcony scenes. I began to wonder how that famous story would have ended if Romeo and Juliet had lived on to see what love was really made of, rather than offing themselves for Shakespeare's dramatic purposes. By this time, I was married myself. Figuring out what makes a marriage work for a lifetime was no longer a hypothetical matter. It was do, or die.

One day it occurred to me that if you wish to succeed at something, you ought to speak with the people who have actually done it, and find out how. I started seeking out couples who had been married 40, 50, or even 60 years. Since I was a pastor, most of those I had ready access to were my elderly parishioners. Over the course of a decade, I repeatedly quizzed long-married couples on what had made their marriages work. Out of respect for my position as their spiritual guardian, they were willing to speak to me openly and frankly. Sometimes I talked with them together, other times, apart. Occasionally, I even spoke to the surviving spouse after their long-time partner's death.

While details varied, a common theme repeatedly surfaced in the comments made by both husbands and wives. None of them believed the success of their remarkably resilient marriages was due to something they had done themselves, or because of some unusual quality they possessed. No gray-haired lover ever sat me down and said, "Young man, if you wish a successful marriage, let me share with you how I achieved that very thing. Once I've told you how I pulled it off, you can go do the same." They would have been appalled at the thought of going on a radio show to pass out advice. But I figured sinking a deep well to tap their wisdom was worth the effort. What these old lovers knew needed to be bottled and passed out on street corners.

After I would pop the question and sat back, these old pros would pause a long moment to think. Then they would generally sit and think some more. My query about what had made their marriages work always seemed to catch them a little off guard. Finally, they would begin to speak. But to a person they never talked about themselves, or about anything they had done personally to make their multiple-decades-marriages such marked successes. Instead, they began telling me stories that illustrated the rare and excellent qualities of their spouses. The husbands didn't think much of themselves as husbands. But they were enthralled with their most remarkable wives. The wives, on the other hand, didn't see themselves as anything out of the ordinary. But they could sit in a rocking chair or on a sofa in their front room and spend all afternoon telling me the superb qualities of the men they had been privileged to marry.

Eventually, it dawned on me they had stumbled on a great secret and weren't even aware of it. These old lovers had become invisible to themselves. They only saw the excellencies and praiseworthy traits of their partner.

I remember visiting a couple in their 90's one afternoon. The wife had become so elderly and ill that the family had committed her to a care home. Her husband of nearly 70 years was sitting quietly beside her wheel chair when I stopped by her room on a pastoral visit. When they showed me to a chair, I asked them, "How did you meet each other?" The old man held his wife's gnarled hand, and waited for her to start. Her faded eyes looked through nursing room walls and years. A long minute passed before she was back with us again. She struggled to answer my question. Finally, she shook her head and said, "I'm sorry, Pastor, but I can't remember." Then her husband told the story for both of them, and she heard it again for the first time, and knew he loved her. Afterward, I drove home and told Judi, "I want to be married to you so long you've forgotten when we met."

I began trying to put into practice what I was learning from old lovers. I started thanking God for my wife's many excellent points out loud every day when I prayed. I began praising my wife to anyone who would listen-to my songwriting friends on the Internet, to my parishioners at church and the students in my classes. I bragged about her to my fellow pastors when we were out setting up the tent city each summer for camp meeting. In fact, I'd blab about Judi's remarkable qualities, her notable accomplishments, her rare personal courage, and her other womanly fine points to pretty much anybody who would listen on any occasion that presented itself.

In time, my wife began to be rightfully famous in such circles as I frequented. My songwriting buddies on the Internet jokingly wished I'd die so they could date her. My parishioners grinned like idiots every time I'd get started again. Sometimes I'd catch the high school girls in my religion classes standing and gazing pensively at the picture of Judi in her wedding veil that I kept on the corner of my classroom desk. I knew they wanted to be like her. They wanted someone someday to look at them the way I looked at her. My pastor friends sought me out each summer at camp meeting time, eager for the next installment of the wonderful lady God had unaccountably allowed Skip Johnson to marry. Sometimes word got back to Judi and embarrassed her a bit.. But speaking well of my wife drew those young minister husbands who were my peers to me like a magnet. They wanted to hear more. I could see the wheels of their minds turning as they thought about their own wives, and saw them again with new eyes.

Am I a great husband? I wish I were. I haven't forgotten myself nearly enough quite yet. Sometimes I have sinned against my marriage by criticizing my wife. May God forgive me. And here I am, even now, passing out advice like a radio relationship expert of some sort. I have definitely not arrived. Not yet. But I am walking in the direction I've seen those old lovers walking. I'm practicing looking in the direction I've seen them gaze. I'm making the journey with a most remarkable and lovely lady God has unaccountably blessed me with, a woman of fragile strength, whose excellencies continue to unfold and amaze me. I tell Judi, You are a grace in my life. That means you are something I very much need, but don't deserve at all. We will have been married 29 years the end of next month. I still love her like my next breath.

Is marriage irrelevant? It may seem so to others. If they hold marriage is irrelevant, in their experience, it probably will be. Such relationships as they enter into are likely to wither rather than flourish, and to fail rather than go the distance. Such is the power of belief, combined with choice, in shaping our existence. As for me, I'm looking toward that day when Judi has been my wife so long she can't remember when we met, that day I am finally blind to myself as I marvel in the blazing wonder of what God is making of my wife. On that day, my marriage will not be irrelevant. It will be complete.

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