Bit by bit, the more earnest wedding planning has begun. Ordering, shopping, sending, reserving. It’s amazing how many details there are to attend to when the guest list is tiny and the arrangements will ride the modest-simple end of the wave. But while the details of the day will be minimal, every detail of the service will be intentional.
Paul (my suitor-turned-fiance) and I sat in my living room yesterday discussing the words scrawled across a humble notebook sheet. I had started drafting part of our unique wedding vows and welcomed his feedback before he added parts of his own.
Funny, how both the drafting process and receiving his feedback affected my heart.
Later, we tossed around ideas for hymns and scripture passages we would also like to include. As we read New Testament teachings on marital relationships, I was further moved.
I have frequently heard people claim that the idea of requiring a wife’s submission in all things is old-fashioned and barbaric, centered in chauvinism. But when I looked at the deeper essence of the teaching and what I was trying to express in the vows, I was struck by how much honor is needed and how it is so strongly defined on both sides of the relational equation.
Men, your wife needs you to desire to live honorably. To embrace integrity and strength but temper them with love and thoughtfulness. To be as trustworthy as you can be. To protect her physically and emotionally. To actively set “we” before “me.”
She needs you to pray for her, to pray she will always seek the honorable in you.
Ladies, your husband needs you to desire to live honorably. To address issues in a straightforward and kind way, without nagging and dragging around a record of wrongs. To believe in his potential and always hope for his best. To trust him and be trustworthy in return. To support him when the world or his doubts would knock him down.
He needs you to pray for him, to pray that God will give him the strength to remain honorable.
If each spouse would work hard to treat the other honorably in such ways, perhaps fewer marriages would look like a two-person tug of war and more marriages would look like a stone pillar with a slightly-uneven top, where the two-as-one are only somewhat independently discernible.
Easy? No.
Beautiful? Yes.
I, for one, will set down my drafting pen and raise a piece of my imaginary future reception glassware in a toast. To an honorable marriage. And I will pray like crazy, every day, for my beloved.