Romance.
It’s what drives American movies. It captures the heart of our western minds.
We want romance. We want to be desired by a significant other. We want to be
pursued. We want to feel “in love.”
Traditional societies don’t work like that. I recently spoke to a friend of
mine, a missionary in Africa, about the traditional culture he serves. “They
don’t have any concept of romance as Americans would understand it,” he said, “‘Why would you want that?’ they wonder! Love
to them is utilitarian. You marry to get work done and have children. You don’t
marry for romance. It doesn’t make any sense to them.” It caught my attention.
In
December my wife had a heart issue that sent her to the hospital in an
ambulance with difficulty breathing. She’d nearly passed out on her job. Her
speech was slurred. Her blood pressure was super high, and her heart was racing.
I received the frantic call, with that description as I remember it, from my oldest
daughter while sitting in an airport, of all places. (One of these days I’m
going to make a post of airplane/airport stories) The point of the call was
pretty clear. “Dad, this may be the end.” My first thought was, “Oh, no. What I
feared, is happening to me. It’s happened to one of my friends. Now its
happening to me. What will I do?” That’s a totally selfish response, I’ll admit
it. I thought I was going to be single again, and it wasn’t pleasant. Very
dark. Fortunately I got a grip on myself and started thinking rationally. Reactivity
is never helpful. It wasn’t a false alarm because there really are issues and,
at this posting, we still don’t know what they are. But Jan is very much alive
and has been allowed to cross country ski, etc. so it can’t be all that big a
deal—we hope. One of my life long friends wasn’t so fortunate!
It’s
been on my mind ever since and made me ponder marriage, lean into Jan, and appreciate
the gift of life. So while I actually try to fuel the emotional side of our
relationship (I really do, believe it or not), it’s not really romance in the
sense that western people seek romance. It’s the romance of choice. It’s rooted
in more than a feeling but definitely involves wonder and emotion. It’s the
choice to love another person really really well over the long haul. After
years of marriage, while the romantic and emotive side of things is still a
reality, it’s tempered by reality, familiarity, and sometimes fatigue. Let’s
face it, its exhilarating but exhausting to operate on a romantic kind of emotional
level for a long long time especially when there are children involved. Loving
well doesn’t have to be romantic—I want to love lots of people well and I don’t
want it to be romantic with them all—which is probably a good thing. But I do want
to nurture the emotive side of my marriage relationship.
I
think Christianity actually lends itself to that. Here’s why: Christianity uses
the joy of a wedding to describe the consummation of the relationship between
Christ and the church—the bride groom and the bride—at the end of the age as we
know it. It’s the start of something really really good that gets increasingly
better over time. Weddings are romantic. Everything is so fresh, so alive, so
full of joy and future hope and love and emotion and fun and the expectation of
fulfilled desire, etc. Now that’s romance! So marriage, and frankly all of
life, lived under the Christian gospel actually points to what romance is and what
it can be; the celebration of a life that flourishes over the long haul as it
should. Furthermore, marriage lived under this gospel, will be full of grace,
forbearance, and forgiveness, all of which lends itself to romance. It’s life
giving to have someone say with total sincerity, “Hey, you screwed up but
that’s okay. I mess up to and I love you anyway.” That can be said in a cheesy,
or even false, way which stifles romance, friendship and love, but when said
with integrity, it does something to someone. It’s life giving, which leads to deep
emotional attachment.
Furthermore,
marriage as it’s supposed to be, points to what our relationship with God is
supposed to be. I believe that this theology lived out, over the long haul, can
feed romance in a marriage because marriage is a pointer to God. So while we
are far from perfect, it tells us that there’s a lot more to come and motivates
me to discover it, to pursue it, to seek the wonder of it all at all costs in
the life of my spouse. So while the freshness
of new love may be absent after ten or twenty or thirty years of marriage, the
challenge to love deeply, and plumb the depths of another person’s soul can
always be fresh to the brave soul who wants that kind of joy. It will take a
little work, and creativity, but it can happen. And, that is motivated by the
future reality of Christ’s kingdom—the ultimate marriage. It’s thought provoking.
Here’s
some things to create romance in a marriage. This will also work on the
development of deep friendships that need not have all the bells and whistles
of a marriage:
1. Look
for the fresh and the new. To plumb the depths of another person’s soul and
personality will always be new. There’s just too much there. Look for it.
2. Be
others absorbed, not self absorbed. This means you treat “the other” as
primary, not secondary, in your life.
3.
Laugh a lot. Look for the humor in the relationship and celebrate it.
4.
Be generous with praise and gratitude. No one likes to be critisized all the
time. There’s not a person on the planet who is perfect or doesn’t struggle
with things. Overlook it. Be forbearing and forgiving.
5.
Celebrate the past but look forward to, and plan for, the future. You can’t
live in the past but you can celebrate the joy and beauty of the past! My
experience is that when people just live in the past, its like an anchor around
their present and future relationships.
6.
Own your stuff. Be aware of your issues and work on them. Quit blaming your
stuff on others. Really! Stop it. It will kill a marriage or a friendship.
7.
Get creative and try to surprise people. I’ve been able to do this over the
course of my marriage and frankly, even as a young man I did it in dating
relationships and even just ordinary friendships. Planning surprise outings,
vacations, and get togethers that are creative is a lot of fun and builds
deeply into a friendship. For the life of me, I don’t know why people don’t do
this more.
8.
Keep your promises. If you say, “Hey, I’ll call you.” Then call. If you promise
to do work around the house, do it. Integrity goes a long way towards building
a marriage and a friendship.
