A Marital Trajectory: from Fear to Fidelity

I had the opportunity to share my thoughts on marriage on the Listen Up blog today.

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A few weeks ago I read author Brennan Manning on needing proof of God.  He sure doesn’t let us off the hook and I found his directness particularly refreshing:

“Trust that is at the mercy of the response it receives is a bogus trust. All is uncertainty and anxiety. All is precarious.

In trembling insecurity the believer pleads for and even demands tangible reassurances from the Lord that his affection be returned. If he does not receive them, he is disheartened, frustrated, maybe even convinced that it’s all over or that it never really existed…

What the sincere Christian has not learned is that tangible reassurances, however valuable they may be, cannot create trust, sustain it, or provide any certainty of its presence.”

Particularly, in light of marriage, I welcome Manning’s view.

Himself, a retired Catholic priest now married, Manning has lived in fidelity to God, first, and his wife, second.

I think this is the perfect example for marriage.

I often reflect on how without my understanding of fidelity to the unseen - to God - I would be at a loss pursuing emotional and physical fidelity to my spouse. Only a year-and-a-half into marriage and I experience our commitment to each other as a daily choice to love, a choice, not an emotion, and ultimately love rests in trust.

Trust is only true if it lacks circumstance. From Manning’s view, if I require endless reassurances of God’s love for me, I will be the same with my husband, and it is not a true love but rather an affection lacking trust. This kind of insecurity on either of our parts will wrestle our relationship to the ground. And it does, with frequency.

The Bible says “Perfect love casts out fear.”

To live in love, to nurture our marriages, we must trust each other with abandon. We can’t hold back. I must look into my lover’s eyes and confess: “I am yours, body and soul, in sickness and health, in hardship and good times.” I must grab him in my most miserable moments and declare my love.

It’s counter to one part of our nature and life-giving to another, nourishing the spirit and annihilating selfishness. It feels backward in the moment but slowly, over time, it will become a new habit, a new way of being.

It’s the way I want to live.