Creating A Marriage

Creating a Marriage

[Jesus] said, “This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.”

Matthew 19:5

Two days after our wedding, Les and I were nestled into a cottage, surrounded by towering timbers along the picturesque Oregon Coast. A few miles to the south were the famous coastal sand dunes where we planned to ride horses later that week. And up the coast was a quaint harbor village where we thought we might spend another day leisurely looking at shops and eating our dinner by candlelight in a rustic inn some friends recommended. Other than that, we had nothing on our itinerary for the next five days except enjoying the beach and each other, rain or shine.

We couldn’t have dreamed up a better scenario for our honeymoon—not that everything was perfect. We accidentally locked ourselves out of our rental car on day two, and Les offered to walk to the nearest filling station while I waited at the cabin. I wanted to go along.

“Are you sure?” he asked. “It might rain.”

“It’ll be fun. Let’s go.”

We walked and talked the two or three miles to find a pay phone, where we made arrangements for a locksmith to take us back to our car. Sitting on a curb, we waited, saying nothing, while a couple of seagulls chatted it up overhead. Les was fiddling with a stick he’d picked up on our walk, when I realized several minutes had passed without our having said a word. It was an easy stillness, a kind of eloquent voicelessness, in which we were content not to talk.

I think it was there and then, quietly sitting on a curb next to a phone booth under a cloudy sky, that the thought hit me: I had captured true love. The thing I’d been seeking ever since I was old enough to know it could be sought was now in my possession. I had married a man who loved me deeply, just as I loved him. We had committed ourselves to love together, forever. Love’s ethereal mysteries were now unfolding before my very eyes, its elusive qualities fading. While I stood by doing nothing, love was enveloping my being.

I’m not talking about the dizzying, starry-eyed early stage of a relationship; Les and I had dated for nearly seven years before we found ourselves married and honeymooning on the Oregon Coast. The love I experienced that day was clear eyed and grounded. There was no sunset on the horizon, no piped-in background music. This was reality and I was simply taking it in, relishing the silence and stillness of having no other purpose than that of being together. Husband and wife.

Think about the marriage you have created, and relish the good.

A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.

—Mignon McLaughlin