Marriage isn't about finding the perfectly compatible person, even though compatibility has a helpful place. It's much more about finding a good person to fight for who will fight for you, too.
That fighting? That bloody-nosed refusal to lay down and quit? That's what commitment looks like.
Commitment, real and long term, takes a rough strength. Pledging vows is easy in the heat of infatuation; "In sickness and in health" is an easy promise in the midst of health and youth.
It is a harder vow to hold when it is ugly and overweight, tired and sick and irritated. It's harder to hold to when it is aging and angry, insecure and emotional.
It's hard to stay when you want to leave.
It's hard to still commit when it's no longer easy.
But, in a marriage, we promised to commit then, too: in weakness, in sickness, for poorer, for worse, in spite of all feelings and circumstance. When it's difficult, distasteful, and wearisome, we promised to hold on to each other with a single-minded stubbornness. Those are the times when the promise is most important, and when courage is imperative.
"Courage is not simply one of the virtues," C.S. Lewis wrote, "but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality.
True commitment cannot last without courage. And when the commitment reaches those times where it must draw on courage to maintain, that's when it shows us who we are, and what our relationship is, at the highest reality.
All of these are lessons I'm learning fresh in my marriage.
I come from a family riddled three-generations deep with divorce. To my eyes, even now, a committed relationship is this fragile prize, a jeweled egg shattered at the least provocation. And the smallest mosquito-bite imperfections in my marriage stir me to panicked scrutiny for the fatal hairline fractures. My heart sets to pounding at every mistake because I've never lost the terror that I am one mistake away from losing my whole good life.
But Dave has shown me that commitment is as gracious as it is courageous, and that it is designed to weather mistakes. Contrary to all my fears and experience, true commitment is ox-like, leather-skinned and strong. Commitment anticipate my mistakes instead of expecting my perfection; and though I am scaled with doubts that anyone would fight for me through my difficulties, my expectations of abandon and neglect are continually softened by Dave's consistent steadfast affection.
Dave's commitment to me is strong and simple, a beautiful leathery gift he continually chooses to give to me. And I continually choose to give it back to him.
He listens to my many words and thoughts, even though he is a man of few. I argue to the end of a matter, even when I want to run away and hide. He holds me when I cry, even when he doesn't understand why I'm upset. We choose each other.
I am emotional, talkative, artistic and extroverted. Dave is even-keeled, reserved, mechanically scientific, and introverted. We have our friction and it is likely that we are not the most compatible pair of people. But we love each other, and are committed to each other. We choose each other.
I choose Dave. Every day, I choose Dave.
Because of our commitment, we have something good, something very good.
And I am happy.
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