Marriage Moats-Worth It

Published: Tue, 10/16/12

Marriage Moats

Caring for Marriage

Two decades ago a friend told me about the time she had a dream about her father. He had died when she was a teenager, and the loss had been a gray shadow over much of her adulthood. But when he appeared to her in a dazzling burst of unquenchable energy she had one question for him.

"Is it worth it, Dad?" She herself was suffering in a vacant marriage, and could hardly scrape together the strength to nurture her young children. His answer was instantaneous, explosive, and undeniable.

"YES!!!!" The luminescence of his face was like nothing she had ever seen. Even the diminishing effect of her trying to clothe it in words to herself, and then to me, and now from me to you is not enough to dim the glow completely.

The answer has stayed with me, shining like a beacon in my starless moments. I hear myself asking it, famished for reassurance. "Is it worth it?"

I heard the echo of this promise in an article by a neurosurgeon who had a near death experience. He describes himself as more than skeptical about spiritual awakenings, and firmly rooted in science. But when meningitis froze his brain in a coma he visited another realm where all the rules changed.

One of the ways he tried to articulate the experience, was to say that one brief waft of love from the angel who accompanied him made his entire life up until that point "worth it."

There are people in my heart whose marriages offer diminishing returns. The kindness has run out, the gratitude dried up years ago. Anger has a permanent place at the table and change does not seem to be around the next bend. I pray that one day when the chrysalis falls off us both, I will throw my arms around them and ask the the question that binds my heart now like a too tight cage.

"Your marriage, it was hard. Does it matter any more? Was it worth it?"

I will see them shake with laughter, like a tree whose leaves cannot hold still or an ocean whose swelling stops for no one. Their happiness will be as the author described in the article... "The angels sang with a huge and glorious sound, because they could not otherwise contain their joy."

Photo by Jenny Stein

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