Thoughts on Marriage: Last Night Alone

Here’s my final post for a while. I’m getting married tomorrow, and will commence with the honeymoon shortly thereafter. Blogging, like a good many things, will then be far from my mind. You understand.

A few scattered thoughts just came to me as I drove through the night to my apartment. I had just left Bethany’s home and was generally quite tired from the day’s events. Yet even after errands, a rehearsal, and a rehearsal dinner, I still had a little brain space left over for some solemn contemplation of the moment. I realized then that I was driving for the final time away from Bethany. From here on out, I’ll be driving to her. Instead of a conflicted goodnight, I’ll be making my way to the smile of my wife. In place of separation, I will join her. Instead of a bleary-eyed drive home alone, I’ll face a bleary-eyed drive home with her. What great changes these are, and how welcome.

I am writing this as a single man. This is one of the last things I will ever do as a single man. I have had my final Friday as a single man. I am now completing my final night as a single man. Though I left long ago, I am now officially leaving my parent’s family and creating my own. I am still my father’s son, still my mother’s hijo, still my sister’s big brother, but all is changed. I am on my own now. I am the leader. I am the provider. I am the protector. I am pledged to, taken, and covenanted with. I have traded a lifetime of autonomy for one of commitment. I no longer will go to Maine alone to visit my family. I no longer will have my own bank account. I will not spend Friday nights as only I wish to spend them. Everything, everything, everything is changed. This is glorious stuff. It is also weighty. After all, it’s not often a man’s life changes overnight.

My bride and I now take on the responsibility of representing the mysterious union of Christ and His people, the church. We picture this relationship to the world in a way that neither party can fully grasp but all can see, if they only look. These are awesome days, awesome responsibilities, awesome privileges. I feel slightly daunted by the task but fully desirous of it. Can it be that I, the goofy rapper, am taking a wife, and making my own family? It can. I am.

Such were the thoughts that came on a midnight drive home, the last one I would ever make alone. With the summer night, my singleness slipped away into the dark, a friend I had long known and now bade a lifelong “goodbye.” On went the car, and on went my life.