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Living Promise

Some promises must be kept despite the suffering...because of the suffering, because suffering can open the human heart. Something beyond our human mind or heart led us to these promises that from the beginning were intended to transform our lives. "God did not bring you to this marriage to make each other happy," the priest told my nephew and his bride. "God brought you together to save one-another's souls." Eventually they will (and probably already have) "suffered" love. We do suffer love. If we manage to keep that promise, if we manage through some indescribable grace to BE there, IN love, even while the love itself is breaking our hearts, the promise will shine forth through our tenacity as a living thing. The promise will transform us and transform itself in the process. This is the promise we keep. We hold to this promise as life catches us up into its whirlwind. Though you kill me, said someone--probably the psalmist, I will not let you go. Even while it seems to kill us, this promise is the very thing that brings us through.
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Friko said…
"God did not bring you to this marriage to make you happy,"

A sentence which struck real fear into my soul.
January 31, 2012 at 1:23 PM
Christin Lore Weber said…
Maybe we have a different sense of what this sentence means. Anyway, I'm sorry because I didn't want to frighten anyone. To me it meant that one person hasn't the power to make another person happy. and probably that's what the priest said. "...to make each other happy." I'll correct that. I took the statement to mean that we need to go deeper than trying to make our spouse happy -- we need to have the kind of love that is salvific. Sometimes that means suffering with the other. I know there is a very deep happiness in this sort of love, a happiness that most would not call happiness because it rises up from the core of suffering. But they aren't really opposites.

As I said with the first post on promises -- I'm pondering this topic. Thanks for making me go deeper.
January 31, 2012 at 4:00 PM
Luna said…
I think that the true happiness in marriage comes from Agape, our happiness comes in loving in a way that is best for the other, but it does not diminish our own capacity for happiness, nor does it make the "other" responsible for our happiness. Looking to another human being does not ever meet that spiritual hunger for happiness which comes from intimate relationship with God, Spirit, by whatever name we call Him/Her/It. YES!! Marriage and intimacy of relationship are reflections of our relationship with that which is greater than ourselves. Does loving cause us pain, and suffering? Yes, of course it does! There is no rose without the thorn! It often "hurts" to have to adapt our grasp on our own desires, preferences, to live in love with another. In agape we put what is best for the other as utmost importance in how we live, interact, choose. Sometimes that means breaking a promise, sometimes the situation or person to whom we made the promise has changed and in essence made it impossible to keep the promise, sometimes we grow, change more fully into the person were were created to *BE*, or in some cases as you have so eloquently stated, we fulfill those promises in other, perhaps even more sacred and profound ways!

It's been lovely to catch up on your blog this morning dear one!!

~Maripat
http://awishinthewoods.blogspot.com/
February 4, 2012 at 7:43 AM
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