Have To Marriages

Folks don’t have to get married. I asked couples, why do you want to get married. Our bride and groom were ready with an answer, about commitment, friendship, and facing a future together.Rose Petals after Wedding

Wasn’t always this way…years ago, folks would look at me dumbfounded that I would not know why. It should be obvious

• they were out of school…so they married
• she was pregnant…so they married
• he needed to stay in the country so marriage
• they were of a certain age and they wanted to live together, or love together…marriage!

Marriage was so expected, that until about 10 years ago, if you lived together long enough, you were automatically married by common law…it was the common way of life.

Now it is uncommon. I believe that automatic, have to, common-law marriage is losing ground. Folks fighting this trend can be found trying to stake out privilege and punishment on the basis of marital status. But when marriage privilage is a reduced to getting a discounted rate at the nataorium, the nobility of the idea that everyone should be married is coming to an end.

We can groan and moan, but lets not. It is a sunny shining day indoors, and we can rise above the weather, as our bride and groom are rising above the common and by making a commitment.

The “have to” automatic marriage is about current situations, age, graduation, horomones, parents, pregnancy…and a lot of those marriages do fine, even well. But the best of marriages the intentional ones which are being revealed even as the automatic ones recede into history.

Love is about doing what you don’t have to do for the others.

Love is not light heartedness and light headnesses, not about beauty, perfumes, romance, respectability, or even religion.

According to Paul in 1 Corinthians 13, love isn’t an emotion but a lifestyle choice. To be kind, forgiving, ready to excuse, humble…it is a choice not out of external circumstance or internal feeling but of being in the world connected and commited with another.

Our couple have chosen to gather everyone, they didn’t have to, the Lord names that they didn’t have to,  within a congregation they joined and attended for years that they didn’t have to, legally bind themselves together, they didn’t have to, to say that they will be together as long as they both shall live…which they don’t have to. They choose. They chose to be married when they didn’t have to.

Now you two, turn and look around

You are marrying each other, but these are your family and friends, and brothers and sisters in faith, mothers and fathers in Christ who agree with your lifestyle choice, who stand with you today and throughout your life. Cheering you on the course you have chosen of committed caring in casual cold world. They will lend you their warmth and remind you of your choice to love in marriage on those cold rainy days for the soul.

There was a book at couples cottage at a getaway resort. Couples wrote how it was their honeymoon, New Years or Valentine Romantic holiday or their getaway before their wedding or their first child. One even had a fourth anniversary… but there was odd one… celebrating the end of a year of marriage counseling… they were joyful they had chosen to continue to love. That one, seemed the most loving to me. 

Weddings are no longer automatic. They probably never should have been. Marriage is choosing to love as Paul tells us, you have chosen well. I tell you that God blesses your choice with love that no one can separate.