I am loving the color purple right now and am realizing that getting married and having a marriage are actually two different things - two distinctly royal parts of the Esther Process. I have not been overly concerned with the wedding itself, though I have a few wedding magazines sitting on my living room table at home for good measure and I also carry one with me so I can read what other brides have done when I am not busy. But, I am concerned with keeping the sacredness of the union in the forefront of my mind. I do not want to lose the sacred, as I have lost so many other things that I cannot get back.
I found a book entitled Sacred Marriage by Gary Thomas while Mr. and I were wandering through Barnes and Noble last week looking for ways to spend my birthday gift from his parents. Holding the paperback in my hands, I got the feeling that I should approach the reading of it as the help I really need - not so much the same as reading Inside Weddings.
We all know and it is understood that weddings last at most an hour, but a marriage is a lifelong endeavor. Somehow, it seems easier to not acknowledge that and distract ourselves with throwing a big party instead. Forever seems an abstract concept, though we are living eternity now. I love parties but I do not love heartache. It is better, I believe, to throw myself into building on a sure foundation, a sure thing. Taking risks in marriage is not wise, as I have witnessed time and again. And I have never been called unwise.
Overly cautious maybe. Innovative, surely. Able to see sounds and hear colors (synesthetic)? Artistically and faithful to the God-given spark inside? Absolutely. Unwise? Never. Never.
In two months my name will change again, though I have already released myself from the last name that I held for 34 years. The going joke is that I will be "Locked" in. Do I want to be? Yes. Do I want to escape? No. But what will it be like to be someone's wife, someone's mom, when I have been myowne somebody for so long? That is the harder question, quite frankly. That is the more realistic stance to take. But who really asks this question?
I look in the magazine that is in my bag, carried everywhere, and I begin to wonder if the brides highlighted in it asked the right questions to make the right decisions. I'm not talking about floral arrangements or chic shoes luxe bags, though for someone this is important or it would not be indicated as an article on the front cover. Can someone write about the life after the wedding as a topic of discussion or is it really true that fantasy is what people want but reality is what they need? I mean, I understand that weddings are big business but so is divorce court. We want to be joyfully in the first place but definitely not in the second, if the marriage becomes just as important as the precursor to it.
I want to ask this bride (the one whose quote was boldfaced on the magazine page above), was her marriage completely worth it? Is being married better for her than being single? Does she still feel like herself a year later? (Typically these articles are written six months to a year in advance of publication, coinciding with the appropriate time of year.) So, by now, she should have started the beautifully principled, not-so-easily-desirable meshing together of two lives into one. That is a bloody, difficult process if there ever was one.
When God took Adam's rib to make woman, that Eve-girl that rocked his world so (and ours too), there had to have been some blood involved or otherwise why was he put to sleep? There may not have been physical pain in the Garden, but there was blood. Adam bled so his wife could blend. To be part of who he was, she had to be part of who he was.
I am preparing to drape our wedding day in purple, but what happens after everything is over? Everybody claps and cheers and wonders under their breath as they witness us drive off into the future how long we will make it.
Mr. will wear that purple; it will be intertwined in my hair and make-up. The children, precious god-children of ours) preceding my entrance will be clothed in it as well, matching us that day. But there are more questions to ask every day after: Will our marriage be draped in purple - the royalty of a lifelong imperial love? Will it be sacred, and will we be holy at the end of it - having drawn closer to God and each other as a result of being together in holy matrimony? Will it be completely worth it? Will those children grow up and admire the union they got to be a part of establishing those many years before?
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