Three-Hundred Years . . . Of Marriage! (Peter A. Black)

I acknowledge the passing a week or so ago of two members of The Word Guild. Many of us, myself included, benefitted hugely from the generosity and grace and writing-related skills of Anna Elizabeth Wiseman and Wendy Elaine Nelles.

Wendy’s memorial service in Simcoe, Ontario, was a full-house event. I saw a good number of TWG friends there, and am glad I was able to connect with several of them. Another memorial event will be held in the Toronto area later. 

I regret not being able to attend Anna’s service. However, I honour and thank God for both ladies’ lives and ministries, and I pray with others of you for our Heavenly Father’s comfort and peace for their loved ones.

The piece below is on another topic. Unfortunately, I don’t have permission to post photos of the participants.

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Close family and friends crowded into the space, along with supportive resident neighbours.  Smiling, helpful staff pinned boutonnieres on five ‘grooms’ and placed beautiful bouquets in the hands of the ‘brides.’  Five couples – three-hundred years total, to date, of shared life!

Mine was the distinct honour and joy of ‘officiating’ at this Marriage Affirmation (or Rededication), last week. In the case of three couples only one of the respective partners is resident in the care facility, whereas both partners of two couples are resident.
The length of those marriages currently range from fifty-four to sixty-five years. Last year, we said goodbye to a couple who passed away in their seventy-forth year of marriage. Wow! How common is that kind of duration likely to be in our society in the years to come?

Not "my" couples. Credit: www.boredpanda.com ; google free

People in developed countries on average are living longer nowadays, but I wonder about the longevity of stable marriages or lifetime spousal relationships from here on.

Back to the event: A group of senior musicians played golden oldies, while the brides and grooms lined up in the hallway. Two were in wheelchairs. One gentleman, his hands gripping his walker handles with all his might tried to control his incompliant limbs, aided by his wife.

Credit: mustard.org.uk

The musicians struck up, I’m Getting Married in the Morning . . . get me to the church on time. The couples filed in and formed a curved line, proudly standing as able or sitting, side by side. Their radiant faces and sparkling eyes beamed out joy and love.

I detected a wistful, far-away look radiating from several faces, which I’m sure communicated that their minds had drifted back to that memorable day when they declared their commitment to their spouse, many decades before. 

In my introductory remarks I shared this verse often read in traditional Christian weddings:

“Unless the LORD builds the house [or, household / family], its builders labor in vain” (Psa. 127:1a, NIV). 

I added that our Lord taught that those who are wise build their house (including household and family and life) on a rock; that is, on the sure foundation of Jesus and His teachings and wisdom. Against these the storms of life cannot prevail.

It has been said:

A smooth sea never made a successful sailor. 

Undoubtedly those couples weathered many a storm throughout the decades. My concluding thought before leading them through their affirmation was in the adage:

The perfume of kindness travels even against the wind.

Moments later, I led the couples through an affirmation of their commitment to each other in the “sight of God and these witnesses.” And then, following the benediction the band struck up again, and cake and ice-cream and punch were served.

God bless’em, every one.  God bless’em!

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Peter A. Black is a retired pastor – well, sort of retired – and lives in Southwestern Ontario. He writes a weekly inspirational newspaper column, P-Pep! and is author of Raise Your Gaze ... Mindful Musings of a Grateful Heart, and Parables from the Pond – a children's / family book. ~~+~~

On our way to Uganda and Rwanda to teach about marriage & renewal - HIRD

By Rev. Dr. Ed Hird

On May 5th to 22nd, my wife Janice and I will spend three weeks in Uganda and Rwanda speaking on marriage and renewal. We will first be speaking, by invitation of Canon Medad Birungi, at the Healing for the Nations Conference in Rwentobo, Ntungamo, the site of the East Africa Revival. Last year there was 25,000 people attend this annual renewal conference.  We met Canon Medad through our good friends Pastors Giulio and Lina Gabeli of Westwood Church in Coquitlam. He came to visit our St. Simon's people at a midweek gathering held at one of our congregant's houses. After our time in Uganda, which will involve a brief safari, we will go 100 miles south to Kigali, the capital of Rwanda where we have been invited by Archbishop Emmanuel Kolini to lead a five-day marriage conference.

We will be bringing our new marriage book with us. The title for our new book is 'For Better, For Worse: discovering the keys to a lasting relationship." The book is a popular reworking of my doctoral thesis produced five years ago.

Here is an excerpt from our new book to whet your interest:

Kneeling at the communion rail with her ex-husband, Linda said to her priest, Ed, “Someday I would like to marry Lloyd again.” As Linda had said this several times before in previous sessions—and Lloyd had said the same—Ed said “Why not now?” She replied, “Sure, why not?” Everyone was thrilled that the communion unexpectedly concluded with a romantic marriage service. Linda and Lloyd had been divorced for six years before remarrying that day.[1] We will never forget that wedding celebration.  Linda and Lloyd later took part in our Strengthening Marriage Workshop, and discovered new ways to improve their relationship.

What if we told you that this book, if you put its principles into practice, would send you on a romantic adventure with your beloved? What if we told you that, by reading and applying this book, you would discover the keys to a lasting satisfying relationship?  Marriage is very important to Ed and Janice (authors of this book and organizers of the Strengthening Marriage Workshop).  We have learned much in forty years of marriage, for better and for worse at times, and want to help other couples benefit from our discoveries about how to have a lasting, fulfilling marriage.  We have made many painful mistakes in our marriage. In For Better, for Worse, we pull back the veil on our imperfect marriage and share some of our embarrassing and often humorous moments.  Authentic, non-judgmental story-telling is one of the keys to healing of relationships, especially in marriage. Too many marriages nowadays crash and burn. It doesn’t have to be that way.  Are you willing to try an experiment on how to do relationships in a whole new way?  Would you like to end the cycle of broken relationships and marriages among your family and friends? Healing can start with you. You may remember how Jesus asked the probing question “Do you want to be well?”[2] Do you want your present or future marriage to be whole and healthy?

This book is written for married couples, engaged couples, and those interested in being married one day.  Ed and Janice learned extensively about Family Systems Theory while Ed was doing his doctorate. This book integrates family and biblical wisdom about how to strengthen one’s marriage and relationships. Each of the seventeen chapters unpacks key elements of what a healthy marriage can look like. The first four chapters cover the four weeks of the Strengthening Marriage Workshop, developed during the doctoral studies.  The four-fold focus of these four weeks is on strengths, differences, conflict, and intimacy. Even if you read and apply just the first four chapters, you will gain new eyes to understand your marriage relationship in a brand new way.  Are you tired of seeing your partner with the same old eyes?  Would you like to discover who they really are, beyond the mask?

To say “for better, for worse” sounds very romantic on the wedding day. To live it out ’til death do us part is much more challenging. Many couples naively think that because of their loving feelings toward each other, they won’t face the “for worse” part. Do we have the courage to radically embrace the gift and challenge of the marriage vows “for better, for worse”? Marital joy is a deep joy that spills over into every corner of a family. Marital pain, likewise, is a deep family pain. We know of few families who have not experienced both joy and deep pain in their primary relationships. Has this been the case for your family? This book is about coming alongside people who long for more stable and satisfying marriages. Throughout the book, questions are asked that you can work on, perhaps through journalling and, at the right time, through sharing with your partner.  Thoughtful questions can take your relationship to a whole new level of intimacy.  If you even half-embrace the principles in this book, your marriage will never be the same.

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[1] Names have been changed. It was not a coincidence that our St. Simon’s North Vancouver congregation had just the day before taken a bold and costly stance for marriage. We believe that this wedding was a token of the Lord’s favour on our new adventure in which we as a congregation joined the Anglican Mission in Canada, which is covered by thirteen African Archbishops and bishops. To learn more about this journey, you are invited to read Ed’s earlier book Battle for the Soul of Canada.

[2] “Wilt Thou be made whole?” John 5:6  (kjv)

Being Vulnerable - by Heidi McLaughlin

Vulnerability. Some men run from it and most women secretly crave it.  For some people it leads to anxiety, and if there is shame involved, it can plummet to disconnection. In order to have healthy, vibrant, loving relationships in marriages and friendships we have to become open and vulnerable.

I believe we are afraid of being vulnerable because we all have “dark corners.”  If someone knew this thing about us what would they think? Would they still like us or will it create awkwardness? Will they reveal a deep-rooted confidential secret?  What if I make myself vulnerable and they stomp all over my heart? Like a needle stuck on an old scratchy vinyl record we want to step out of our comfort zone and be vulnerable but our fear holds us back.

With a God given confidence I can now say that I have no problem making myself vulnerable. After all, my life stories are spread throughout my books all over the world.   Personal reflections and poignant moments have made their way onto Facebook and many blogs.  I run into strangers and they tell me things about myself that absolutely startle me.

Twenty-two years ago, with the help of a counsellor, I confronted all my “dark corners” and cleaned out my secret box.  I did this because keeping secrets was slowly suffocating me.  I discovered a startling truth:

a.   Our dark corners (shame) CLOSE the door between people. Shame stops us from being vulnerable and authentic because we are afraid we will be “found out. It stops us from fully loving and bonding with each other.

b.   Our dark corners OPEN the door for Satan. He uses those dark corners to crush us, shame us and keep us rehearing old lies.

I had enough of those ugly mind games and needed to open all areas of my heart and become vulnerable. I realized we are all imperfect people struggling with fears, insecurities, failures and afraid of looking stupid. But if we want to fully experience love acceptance and belonging we have to be willing to talk about the ugly stuff, the things that hurt us or shame us: We have to start conversations like this:

1.         “Because my daddy always put me down and made me feel stupid, when you talk to me like that in front of other people I feel diminished, hurt and unloved.”

2.         “I sense that you are looking at pornography. We need to talk about this.”

3.         “When you spend your entire evening on your i-pad, I feel like you love the i-pad more than me.”

4.         “I really feel fat, please help me to eat healthier.”

5.         “I feel overwhelmed and tired, and I feel depression coming on.”

6.         “I was sexually molested when I was eight, and I really struggle with our sex life. Please try to understand and help me.”

7.         “If we keep spending like this, we are going to be in serious trouble.”

Vulnerability laced with love and honesty opens the deepest and most beautiful places in our soul. That’s what marriage and relationships are all about. Brene Brown in her book Daring Greatly[1] unpacks being vulnerable in a way that will transform every areas of our life. Vulnerability allows us to be free to love fully, accept each other wholeheartedly and fully enjoy being who God designed us to be.

Heidi McLaughlin lives in the beautiful vineyards of the Okanagan Valley in Kelowna, British Columbia. She is married to Pastor Jack and they have a wonderful, eclectic blended family of 5 children and 9 grandchildren. When Heidi is not working, she loves to curl up with a great book, or golf and laugh with her husband and special friends. You can reach her at: www.heartconnection.ca

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[1] Brene Brown, Daring Greatly, How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead (New York, NY: Gotham Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2012).

Spying on the neighbours - Kathleen Gibson

A pair of Bushnell 7 X 15 X 35 binoculars hangs ready for quick use at our house - the better to spy on our avian neighbours. They don’t seem to mind the paparazzi, and appear oblivious to our inspection. (Then again, perhaps they’re watching us.)

One year a robin pair built their nest in the maple tree outside our living room window. I peered in often as the birds raised their three nestlings. 

In his role as fly-in provider, the male robin regularly coaxed his mate up to the edge of the nest in order to move closer and feed the chicks. His mate supervised - seemingly glad for the break.

The nest, an almost weightless, neatly swirled circle of grasses, rested in a crotch of bark two limbs up, about ten feet off the ground. I worried plenty about it during the series of severe storms that battered our area. An umbrella of leaves offers little protection, I thought.

During the worst of those storms, one that even threatened human life, I grabbed the binoculars and sat down in front of the window - to add a little watching to my worrying. There sat Mrs. Robin, stone-still, wings spread wide over her offspring. Drenched to her pinfeathers, her beak ran water-droplets like a leaky faucet. But when the wind lifted the nest almost at a right angle to the tree, she clung tight.

Every so often, the gale seemed to pause for an intake of breath before its next big gust. In those moments, in darted the sodden male, bearing take-out. To my astonishment, he first fed his mate. She ate, then lifted herself off the nest just high enough for the chicks to thrust their gaping mouths out from under her wings.

The deluge that accompanied that storm chased over a hundred people from homes nearby. Many of those homes were irreparably damaged, and later condemned. Yet the small circle of grasses in the maple outside our window remained intact, and so did the little family.

I'll never forget their song after the storm subsided -- clear and sweet, it soared to me, even through the glass.

These are difficult times to keep a home together. Marriages have never before collapsed at the present rate. Battered by sundry storms, partners flee commitment, sacrificing future joy for present relief or passing pleasures. I grieve the brittle spirits, the inevitable from-bad-to-worse years, the wounds festering in the bewildered hearts of children.

My parents, 90 and 95, celebrated their sixty-second anniversary last week. They remind me of the robins after that storm. Bedraggled, weather-beaten and weary. They’ve held hard to Jesus, fought storms together and survived formidable enemy attacks. They even survived raising me. But they have survived, and so have their values, reflected in each of their children's lives.

If I’ve learned anything from the Robin family, it’s this prayer, "Oh, Lord, give us robin-spirits. Our neighbours are watching."

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From the archives of Sunny Side Up.

Sunny Side Up has been published weekly since 2001, and runs in various Western newspapers. 

Find author, columnist and broadcaster Kathleen Gibson on the web at www.kathleengibson.ca

 

Love in Many Colours by Ruth Smith Meyer

Love blooms in many places, times and ages. Saturday we attended our third wedding in four weeks. None of these weddings were what is most apt to come to mind when you first think of such an occasion.  You know—a young couple discovering the one with whom they want to spend the rest of their lives, inexperienced but blissfully happy and looking forward to a life of happily-ever-after, the wedding day a culmination of careful planning and nervous anticipation.  Love, new young love is exciting for what it is and what it can become.

The couple at our first wedding the beginning of May, had known each other since grade school and had off and on crushes on each other.  Sound typical?  No not quite, for they both married others and have gone through the agony of break-down, feelings of entrapment and failure and final severance of those first vows.  It’s not what any of us would long for, but it happens.  Then they found each other again, still reeling from the difficult times they have faced.  They are older and perhaps wiser.  The happiness on their faces reflected their love. Love has risen from the ashes and bloomed again.

The second wedding was between two forty-somethings who never found the right one before they discovered each other. Although they are inexperienced in marital relationships, their lives so far have been full—they have experienced varied slices of life and service, growth and maturation in many other ways. They’re comfortable in their skin.  The light and joy on their faces too, spoke of their happiness in this new love they have discovered in each other.  Love, long-awaited has finally burst into bloom.

Saturday was different again.  This time it was two seniors who had loving partners for many years and grieved to see their spouses slip away and to leave them widowed. They have struggled to find who they were as single people.  After a life time of sharing everything, their meals eaten alone, the places they wanted to or needed to go feeling so different with no one to share, the end of the days coming with no one to talk over what happened and to sound out new ideas they uncovered, no one to really need them.  Then they discovered each other. Even though the groom needed a little help in walking the aisle, he was almost giddy with joy and excitement.  The bride’s face shone with love and care. Love has bloomed again like fall asters surrounded by autumn leaves fallen to the ground, we could see real magnificence and a deep hue of beauty reserved for those with such a level of maturity and stability.

It’s something God has built into us—the longing to share our lives intimately with someone else. It’s beautiful when the connection is made and grows into that kind of love.  We rejoice when two people discover a deep love and commit themselves to each other.  But it doesn’t always happen. 

There are many women and a few men in my circle of friends who have my admiration.  Those are the ones who have dreamt of having that special someone and for love to bloom in their lives but it hasn’t happened (at least yet.)  However they have found ways to be happy, to serve and be special friends and encouragers to others in their lives.   They are happy and living useful lives, spreading their own brand of happiness.  It may not be romantic love, but love blooms there too.

Love in any life is important.  There are so many aspects to love and ways to experience love.  Perhaps the best way to finish this reflection is part of a rendition of 1 Corinthians 13 read at the most recent wedding:

We know only a portion of the truth,

       what we say and know about God (or love)

                  is always incomplete.

But when the Complete arrives,

our incompletes will be canceled.

We shall know fully,

                                    even as we are fully known,

(and isn’t that part of our longing for love?)

We don’t yet see things clearly.

      We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist.

But it won’t be long before the weather clears

      and the sun shines bright!

We’ll see it all then,

see it all as clearly as God sees us,

                                    knowing him directly just as he knows us!

  But for right now,

until that completeness arrives,

we have three things to do

            to lead us toward that consummation:

 

Trust steadily in God,

hope unswervingly,

love extravagantly.

 And the best of the three is Love.