2

So...continuing this little number thing.  1 was about me and this blog, so 2 is going to be about marriage.  I've been thinking about marriage a little more recently since I am going to be officiating my first one in just over a month.  So let's consider this my first draft of my wedding homily.

Mary and I will have been married for 6 years on August 19th (if you would like to send gifts email me for our address) and I have to say, as corny as it sounds, that each year is better than the last.  This is not to say that it is perfect or that there isn't bumps in the road, but when you really make a commitment to someone something just seems to make things better.  The commitment is important, the oath to your spouse and to God and maybe most importantly to yourself that no matter what happens there is no exit door.  That when you utter the word forever you actually mean it.

Marriage requires what I consider the Three Cs of Marriage: commitment, communication, and compromise.  If you build a marriage on those three building blocks you will be able to sustain through any trial, through any storm that comes your way.  As I already said, commitment to your spouse to your God and to yourself.  Then our communication needs to be open and honest, allowing your spouse to know you allows you to be known.  That might sound redundant, but too often in this life we suffer from identity confusion, no one knows who we are so it doesn't matter who we are. Finally there is compromise, whatever thoughts you have about compromise needs to grow exponentially, as a single person you may have had to compromise from time to time, maybe with your sibling, maybe with a roommate, maybe on a class project, truthfully you ain't seen nothing yet.  Marriage requires that you compromise on every aspect of your life, no longer do you unilaterally get what you want how you want it whenever you want it.  That may sound a little extreme, and it is, once you enter into a life with someone else it necessarily requires that you live that life alongside someone else.

I love being married, as I already said each year is better than the last.  Having Mary by my side lightens the load of everything that I go through.  No longer is it me against the world, and I know that as long as their is breath in Mary's lungs it never has to be again.  There are still those hard times, God knows the first year was pretty rocky at times, but with a strong loving partner by your side and having commitment, communication, and compromise as your bedrocks you will find that the storms tend to always pass.

Peace and Love,
Pastor K

[ I suppose a caveat is needed since I am a pastor.  On my first official Sunday at Linton I had a conversation with a parishioner who told me that they were studying to be a pastor in another denomination (yes CHOGers I think we are a denomination, at least until we start moving again).  All was going well until the ordination board renewed a pastor who had willingly married two people who were in "an adulterous relationship", i.e. who had been divorced.

 I do not like divorce, I weep when I hear that a family is being torn asunder because someone has decided to end what they claimed would not end.  Divorce is what is destroying the American family, not homosexuality.  That all said, I do not think that divorce is a sin, at least not universally.  On occasion I believe that divorce is the righting of a wrong, some marriages should not have happened in the first place, for instance, anyone who is willing to abuse their spouse does not deserve to have that spouse, or any for that matter.  Forgive them, yes, but stay in the relationship, probably not.

In addition to that I do not believe that people who have been divorced, for any reason, deserve to not be happy or be able to be married again.  I feel that I have enough planks in my eyes to overlook a few specks in other people's, hence, I would perform a marriage for two divorcees.  Luckily for me, that parishioner no longer has internet access, so he most likely will never learn that I am open to such things, or maybe the next church that he left would be mine.]