Is Marriage a Spiritual Practice?
Much has been said about marriage being the epitome of human relational bliss because it fore-shadows of our relationship with God, as depicted by the Church as the Bride of Christ. This image of eternal bliss, coupled with our modern Hollywood portrayal of relationships as hormone-driven, emotional experiences has no basis in reality, as any married couple will confirm.
Marriage is hard work.
It demands things of us that friendships never have to deliver. I had all sorts of ideas of what marriage would look like, and almost all of them were wrong. I thought it would organically evolve into something beautiful. I thought we would be soul-mates with common goals, ideals and aspirations. I thought we would see eye-to-eye, and when we didn’t, that we would easily come to a mutual understanding.
My 34 years of marriage to Sheila have revealed attitudes and mindsets that I never realised were inside me. I was hugely unprepared for what was needed, and often unable or unwilling to have the selflessness necessary to make marriage work. In short, I lived as an individual with another individual, and didn’t recognise that I had to work to find the intersecting overlap that joins the two individuals into a shared relationship.
In part, I can blame my Autistic tendencies (I’m on the spectrum) because I’m not wired to grasp the emotional nuances necessary for a relationship to flourish. Women have an innate ability to “read the room”, to pick up on emotional signals and respond appropriately. Guys, not so much. ASD1 guys (like me), even less. But we are not our wiring, so I can’t blame it all on that. I can choose my responses and my actions. I am not a helpless victim. I am only now starting to grasp the significance of my responses and attitudes. I have been a VERY slow learner.
Sheila has tried many things over the years to try to get me to get on board with the marriage, none of which have produced the outcome she hoped for. She has almost given up on several occasions, and it is to her credit that we are still together and now working through the issues we’ve struggled with.
This brings me to the title of this post “Is Marriage a Spiritual Practice?”. Spiritual practices require work, commitment, dedication, and resolve. Spiritual practices are often inconvenient, they stretch us, they require us to be what we weren’t before we started them. Spiritual practices make demands on our time and our priorities. So the answer to my question is “Yes”, marriage is all of these things.
Faith, like marriage, is only easy when it isn’t being tested. At all other times, it requires serious commitment and unswerving dedication to an outcome that may not yet be visible. I hope that your faith journey is smooth, but I know that this is an unrealistic expectation equal to the Hollywood portrayal of blissful relationships. Instead, I pray for endurance to run the race. May God’s grace be with you, and blessings for the journey.
Faith should be lived out in practice
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