The irreplaceable cornerstone of marriage

My daughter was married last month. Mothers fast-forward to this day when we find out we’re pregnant, on the day we give birth, when she plays dress up in our wedding gown, when shopping for prom, and, of course, when we see the ring on her finger.

But beyond the typical mother-of-the-bride speculation, I also do this for a living. As founder and president of Them Before Us, I’m up to my eyeballs in marriage stats. I have written about why marriage is a matter of justice for children, crafted a teen curriculum offering a modern-day apologetic for the institution, and regularly rattled off the risks of cohabitation. Marriage work is my everyday occupation.

And yet, even I was not prepared for the power of my firstborn’s wedding day: the beauty of a young bride and groom regaled in opposite yet complementary garb and framed by joyous attendants, the symbolic bridal handoff from father-in-law to son-in-law, my daughter’s choice to make her entrance (in my wedding gown) to the Nutcracker’s “Grand Pas de Deux,” and the prominent crosses drawing the eyes up toward the transcendent and relational God who has made the two, one. It was more than I could have asked for or imagined.

My husband, Ryan, and I both came from fractured families. Like most children of divorce, our wedding guest list was complicated. Who belonged in which family shot? Reception table assignments were so fraught we opted for open seating. My father attended with his second wife, who photographed nicely but who also promptly announced their divorce when we returned from our honeymoon. From the time we started dating through our now 26-year-old marriage, we resolved to simplify things for our kids.

My daughter’s newly minted in-laws’ union was not sparked by similarly bitter embers. Still, their 26-plus-1-year marriage delivered to her a virtuous, steady, wickedly smart, photogenic musician. There were few complexities when crafting the reception seating chart. God bless simplicity.

My husband and I have grown our family through birth, through adoption, and now through marriage. I can tell you, it’s all wondrous. But there’s something stunning about grafting in a young man flanked by his uncomplicated family who has just pledged his life to your daughter.

Even though I’ve done plenty of reading about the mystical union represented by the joining of husband and wife, promoted to my children as a cornerstone versus a capstone view of marriage, and have prayed for this day since the pink lines first appeared, I was struck dumb watching my own flesh and blood found a new mini-society.

They opted for the most traditional of vows. No promises to “honor one another’s individuality,” no statement that he was her “greatest adventure” nor that she helped him “become his best self.” No whiff of the temporal or what either would get from the union. Just raw, unflinching pledges of total self-giving. That he would “love her, comfort her, nourish her, honor and keep her—in sickness and in health, in sorrow and in joy—and forsaking all others, keep only unto her, so long as you both shall live.” That she would “obey and serve him, respect, honor, and keep him—in sickness and in health, in sorrow and in joy—and forsaking all others, keep only unto him, so long as you both shall live.”

They each repeated, “With this ring, I thee wed, with my body I thee serve and honor, and with all my worldly goods, I thee endow, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”

Can you imagine if every husband and wife vowed and delivered on the promise to “with my body I thee serve” and “of all my worldly goods, I thee endow … so long as we both shall live”? Every mini-society would be fused by iron bonds. Our macro society would be unassailably strong.

But our nation has largely forsaken this event and the total giving of the self in the lifelong union it aims at. We have instead opted for immediate gratification and self-fulfillment. Adults and children suffer as a result.

My husband and I came of age during the no-fault divorce epidemic, where we had a front-row seat to the dissolution of our parents’ unions. But many kids today never knew their parents as being married at all. Their mother or father may instead have had a revolving door of partners or live-ins or opted for the single-mother-or-father-by-choice route. Some were created through artificial technologies and “third parties,” where one or both parents were cut out of their lives at the moment of conception. Many children don’t even know what wholeness looks like. And we scratch our heads at why the next generation is failing to have children, get married, or even have sex.

We must both “show” and “tell” our children that marriage isn’t a drudgery. Weddings like my daughter’s, including a deliberate dating process and premarital counseling, must feature prominently in the “showing.” There is a direct connection between beauty and truth, and the beauty of her wedding day shouts truth to a confused culture.

We also need to “show” the broken kids in our children’s orbit what “intact” looks like. Even though our own families were complicated, Ryan and I each had nearby examples of simple, devoted marriages that we aspired to pattern ours after. Those couples prayed us to the altar and supported us on the other side.

Here’s to weddings—your own, your children’s, or the ones for which you wildly honk as you see bridal parties snapping pictures outside churches on frigid December afternoons. May we ever be overcome by the truth and beauty of weddings and understand that there can be no national renewal without them.