From Michelle. 25 June, 2011.
Dear friends and family,
Breathe. I look back over that last entry and am reminded again and again of the need to stand fast amidst the chaos and simply take in air and push it out.
We have packed up our house and shipped it off to Manila. Breathe. We have renewed our vows, celebrated birthdays, helped Steve’s parents renew their vows, traveled to Ohio and New York, house-hunted from a distance and made countless decisions. Breathe. For two months we will live out of three suitcases in five cities. Then we will plant ourselves anew in Manila. Breathe.
I breathe best when I am looking up. But I breathe almost as easily when I look at Steve and he looks back at me; such is our story bound up with the One who first breathed into us. Who can explain the ways that we have become enmeshed? So that, when I look at him, I am almost looking at a reflection. So that, when I am with him it is as easy as if I were by myself. So that, when we are apart for even a few hours, I miss him. So that, when he was hurt, it was as if it were happening to me. The old Genesis verse rings true: Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. (Gen. 2:24) Ephesians takes it further, adding: This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. (Eph 5:31-32) Indeed, Steve’s spirit does not yet live in me as Christ’s spirit does, and yet with each passing year, it is more deeply entrenched. Our interests become more deeply entwined, our identities more closely tied. Just as I want more of Him and less of me, so also my desires for Steve’s well being grow as my desires for myself diminish. Ten years together have worn one steady path which now only occasionally diverts into two.
Celebrating my 40th birthday in New York.
On Monday, May 23rd, Steve asked me to marry him again. The amazing photographers who joined us created a sacred space, and decided to tell more than just the moment through the photographs they took. Through a day, they told the year. Through a lens, they told a marriage. This is what they did:
Yesterday, Steve married his parents again, a renewal of vows after fifty years. I tremble at the thought that we would be allowed to share our lives for that long. I hope that if we did, we would not only deepen in oneness, but reflect more brilliantly the mystery our union embodies, Christ and the church. If my love for Steve is but a dim reflection of the love that remains in God, then I will gladly give myself over to it. The hackneyed verses of 1 Corinthians 13 bear repeating, despite their timeworn familiarity:
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
Love never ends. I am clear that marriage is an imperfect mirror, a finite image of an infinite truth. Our lives will end, as will our union. We will fail one another. Our paths will diverge. Nevertheless, when we bear and hope and endure together, we dip our toes into the eternal. In New York, we watched a film that touched on that truth: “Unless you love, your life will flash by.”
While breathing delivers a moment, love delivers a life.
Today, I give thanks for Love.
Love,
Michelle