Marriage

When this marriage is set out to be judged, it will win no prize for beauty.

It will smell of salt and tears, and it will taste of sweat and blood. It will sag and leave stains on the tablecloth.

We will not run, you and I. We will hobble to the judgment seat, lame and halt and oozing infection from our stub feet. We will present our marriage through stained fingers.

We will not waltz in on the clouds as we had planned, wispy and glowing with untainted love and trailing romance and shades of perfections. That dream departed from us early. The gentle gossamer wings we started with shredded at the faintest wind. I try to wrap them around me and they stick like spider webs to a dream.

We’ve rebuilt them over the years. Soldered together out of spare parts and duct tape. They don’t flutter in the wind anymore. But when the gales and storms arise, I cling to them and they do not bend.

And here we are. Staggering to heaven battle worn and filthy. We passed through the worst we could do to each other. I know the awful you, the ugly you, the dark and trembling nighttime you. I have your grime under my fingernails. You have visited the caverns where I keep my anger. You have smelled its rankness; you have not imagined it away. Your arms are riddled with cuts from my teeth.

In the end there is this. In all the angry words we cast at each other, the small cruelties and lengthy resentments, in the dark and the barren wilderness of our failings we did not quit. Time after time we turned to our Lord, tore a length of tape from his endless roll, and patched ourselves up. We wept and giggled and signed our names on the plaster cast. You made a joke; I held your hand.

We stayed.

This is the miracle of it. This is why we go boldly, clinging to each other like new lovers. This is why our limping steps are proud, why we so confidently display the glorious shambles we have created. This is why we are happy together. Because we have seen the reasons, we have handed over the explanations, we have drawn up the papers of justification, and when none would have blamed us for walking away, we have reached for the tape instead of the door.

We have stuck ourselves together. I cannot be pried away from you.

And so we will present this marriage to God.

We will hobble to the judgment seat, lame and halt and laughing. We will present our marriage through intertwined fingers.

It is soldered together with spare parts of gold and duct tape of steel. It overflows with commitment and forgiveness and devotion and forgiveness and love and forgiveness that leaks out and stains with compassion everything it touches.

When this marriage is set out to be judged, it will win no prize for beauty.

But it will win.