Getting married was one of the four best things I’ve ever done. The other three are my two children and turning my life over to Jesus.
Despite all the huge mistakes I’ve made (and some of my mistakes have been both public and grievous) these four things outweigh them all in my eyes. I look at my life so far, and I can honestly say that I feel it’s been good. It’s been very good.
The reasons I point to are my husband and children and that the Lord God of the universe has accepted me.
In this day and age of cheap cynicism from privileged people, it’s easy to disparage the best of life and thumb our noses to it. As the old Randy Newman lyrics say, money won’t buy me love, but it will buy a pound of cocaine, a 16-year-old girl and the back of limousine, which, the song implies is probably better.
That song, which was titled, fittingly enough, “It’s Money That I Love” was meant as satire. Unfortunately, a lot of people live their lives as if they take it literally.
Jesus asked us, “Which of you, if your children asked for bread, would give them a stone?”
The answer, in our serial-marrying, marriage-skipping, baby-daddy, baby-mama world is, sadly, us. We would give them a stone. We do give them things and stuff when what they need is love and home.
Children need a home with their own parents. They need the stability of marriage, the love of marriage and the future that marriage gives.
Divorce hurts everyone. But it scars children to the core.
Living in the hell of an abusive marriage does the same.
No marriage. Bad marriage. Which is worse?
Why should any child have to settle for either? What is wrong with us that we can’t manage to bond, have children and make a home for them? What sort of suicidal society is that?
I’m going to throw this open for your discussion. Do you think marriage matters? If you do, why do you think it matters? To whom does it matter? Why is it important?
I will limit the discussion to marriage between a man and woman for now. We’ll talk about the whole question of same-sex marriage in another post. For this discussion, let’s confine ourselves to the mess that heterosexuals have made of marriage and why we think this matters.
Please comment. I would like to have a discussion that enlightens all of us.
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