There is a couple I have been friends with since their marriage thirty five years ago. We have touched base through Christmas cards, a few phone calls and even occasional leaps across the three thousand mile distance between us. More recently the internet makes conversation both free and fast.
They came to my town last week for their son's wedding. Their schedule was brimming with breakfast gatherings and rehearsals but they made room for me too.
At one point I was chatting with her in one room while her husband was telling stories about snow to my twins. He overheard his name.
"Talking about me again?" He joined us while she elaborated on his abilities as a search and rescue hero. He has the highest level of training in Canada.
"I called someone to ask if they could give him an award for everything he has done to find people lost in the mountains, or to drag them from crashed vehicles before they explode. The man said he would get back to me. He called awhile later to say no such award exists, because no one has ever accomplished as much. So he made a certificate of appreciation."
I enjoyed the mutual admiration of their relationship which has weathered three dozen brutal winters in the Canadian Rockies. It has not been easy, but they never went looking for easy. The marriage they have built is strong because of the storms, not in spite of them.
After they left I savored the way she spoke about him, and his joy in hearing it. She took pride in his bravery, and I daresay it made him feel loved.
How different it would have been if he had done the boasting about himself. But the way God designed this partnership, is more elegant than that.
The man said, "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called 'woman,' for she was taken out of man. Genesis 2
The woman was created out of man by the transcription of his egotistical wisdom, which is wisdom from natural truth; and that the love of this wisdom was transferred from man into woman that it might become conjugial love; also that this was done, so that in the man there may be, not self love but love of
his wife, and she from her innate disposition cannot do otherwise than swivel the self love with the man into his love to her. Moreover, I have heard that this is effected by the wife's love, neither the man nor the wife being conscious of it. Hence it is that no man can ever truly love his partner conjugially if he is in the pride of self- intelligence. A woman is formed into a wife by means of the things she takes from her husband and from his breast and inscribes on herself. Emanuel Swedenborg, Marriage Love 193
