Dying To Be Married

Dying to Be Married

Our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever.

2 Corinthians 4:17-18

When M. Craig Barnes served as pastor of National Presbyterian Church in Washington, DC, he was conducting a series of premarital counseling sessions with a young couple. As they came to their last meeting just a few weeks before the wedding, the young man suddenly confessed, “I just have to say that I am so scared of this!” Seeing his fiancée’s concern, he quickly added, “It isn’t that I’m afraid of being married to you. I’m afraid of losing you. When my mother died, the grief was just overwhelming, and I love you even more. I just don’t know how I can ever survive if something happens to you.” Then he looked at Pastor Barnes.

“I could tell from his pleading eyes,” says Barnes, “that he wanted me to reassure him that they were both young and healthy, and that he needn’t worry about such things.” But having buried too many young people, he couldn’t do that. So he said the following:

In my experience, 100 percent of all marriages come to an end—some tragically through divorce or early death; others last for over 60 years. If your marriage is long and filled with intimacy, then when death comes, you’re going to be even more in love than you are now. Then it will hurt even more to say goodbye when the time finally comes. And that’s the best scenario you’ve got! So why do you want to go through marriage wondering if this is the day you’ll lose your beloved? Give her up today. Get the grieving over with. Die to your right to have her, die to your fear of losing her, and die to the myth that you can keep her. Until you do, you’ll be too afraid to enjoy her.^a

This may not have been the message the young groom wanted to hear, but as Barnes says, “On this side of Easter, it’s the only thing a pastor can say.” Why? Because it’s only in dying that we can finally live.

Has the fear of loss caused you to hold back from deeper intimacy with your spouse? Take a moment to acknowledge that your spouse is a gift from God, and thank him for each and every day you share together. Then choose to accept whatever God has for your future.

The sum which two married people owe to one another defies calculation. It is an infinite debt, which can only be discharged through all eternity.

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

^a 36