Marriage Moats-Don't Open til Christmas
Published: Sat, 12/18/10
| Marriage Moats | Caring for Marriage |
If Sherlock Holmes were assigned the task of distinguishing children from adults in our family and he had but one question at his disposal, I know what it would be. "Do you want Christmas to come more slowly, or more quickly?"
Everyone old enough to vote in a presidential election would have
the sense to want more time... time to squeeze in a few more baking
sessions, or days for decorating, time for tardy packages to arrive or
one more shopping scramble. Or perhaps it would be time used simply to
dilute the concentrated weeks of performances and parades
which can seem as overly sweet as drinking frozen apple juice straight
from the can.
But the younger inhabitants of our house seem oblivious to this
line of reasoning, in spite of the fact that they are likely to benefit
directly from yet one more trip to the mall. Their universal cry is one
of "Hurry up! Right now!" in reckless disregard to my state of
readiness.
To help regulate this inequity of eagerness, we
traditionally employ paper devices equipped with little doors to help
mark the days for people too short to read the wall calendar.
There are other areas of my life, however, in which I too am guilty
of impatience. The last days of pregnancy usually felt as overly
stretched out as my abdomen. My irritability increased with the
circumference of my belly as it barred visibility of my own toes. I
seriously doubted whether these babies would ever come, in spite of copious
evidence that pregnancy is a temporary condition.
As a novice gardener this summer I found it hard to be patient.
Sometimes I would prowl through the fledgling foliage twice a day,
hoping for signs of edible life. Why can't carrots grow more quickly? I
optimistically bought a package of asparagus seeds but when I read that
it doesn't harvest for two years I threw it away in disgust.
Marriage
is a process that takes time to bear fruit. As the bloom of honeymoon
sweetness fades, we must labor through the weeds of our own unplowed
character to find a safe place for genuine love to grow. Anger and
hopelessness slither in in the nighttime of our relationships, when we
somehow expected the results to come without effort, or at least so
much of it.
Many of us have forgotten that the first Christmas was the climax
of a very long wait. For centuries, prophecies opened like little paper
doors to reassure a humanity of children that "Unto us a Child is born!
Unto us a Son is given." Generations of wise men gazed after the silent
stars before one "from the east went before them, till it came and
stood over where the young child was." Surely the waiters for the
promised Messiah knew seasons of doubt, anger and despair. How many
hearts were crying, "Hurry up! Right now!" to an event that marked the
culmination of God's presence on earth?
Yet who would knowingly elect a premature birth, with all its
accompanying perils? Who would harvest their unripe peaches in May, in
lieu of waiting for a sweet, juicy crop in August? If only I can hang
on to a remembrance of the worth of waiting, as I tug at the skirts of
my Mother.
But I am still so young, and too short to read the celestial
calendar. Photo by Robin Trautmann | |