Look for the vow necessity ......

                                                                                                                     August 27, 2014

       I loved the Jungle Book as a child.  Baloo sang a song titled, the bare necessities. The lyrics of that song, "look for the bare necessities, the simple bare necessities..." came to mind when I was trying to figure out a title for a blog about wedding vows. 
      This has been a summer filled with weddings it seems. Just this past weekend, I attended yet another bridal shower.  And today, was one of those heart to hearts with a friend over salads and sweet tea about life, love and everything in between.  Lastly...just moments ago, my facebook newsfeed had an anniversary post commenting how 25 years of marriage had tested their wedding vows.  
       The last resonated within me... on several levels. 
Mike and I had gotten married 25 years ago this past March.  And marriage definitely requires vows because the testing of vows is pretty much a given.   Which got me to reflecting how the traditional vows are erased from most marriage ceremonies today.  The old vows are replaced by the write your own.  Sweet, mushy, heartfelt.  And totally useless (really...!)  vows.  
       I truly believe it is the traditional vow that helps ensure success in marriage.  Not that romance isn't adorable.  Especially within a marriage ceremony.  And handwritten vows are romantic!  I know.  Firsthand actually.   Mike and I wrote our own vows.  This was back in 1989 when doing so was still "relatively" cutting edge :).    I can't recall his to me.  Nor mine to him either....well a teeny part of mine I do remember.   I know for sure I emphasized I actually would "obey"...(it drew a huge laugh from our wedding guests who knew my bullheaded nature...and hence, the reason I actually included it within my "own" vows).
         But...to really know for sure just what we said in our "personal vows" , means I need to first ..find, then...dust off our wedding video and finally, plug it into a VHS player!  Which I cannot bring myself to do...maybe not for years.  Waaaay tooooo painful would that be.  But....I would bet that our heartfelt, handwritten personal vows that we made to one another would surprise and warm my heart.  And probably also be laughable,  ironic or just plain...sad.  I also could be sure each was probably  broken ( at least once)  if not repeatedly.   Well....Except for mine on the "obey" thing ! ;).  LoL.
More than likely, they were among the frivolous ..."I promise to never go to bed mad at you".   or...."I promise to always smile when you come in the door"  or ".....hold your hand even when I'm angry" - kinds of vows.  Someday maybe...I'll play the video if my VHS player still exists...and actually find out.   
           What I do know (now) is that they should contain at least a dollup of wisdom.   For example...."I promise to pay for a babysitter even when the cost of a meal + babysitter means we order the cheapest appetizer on the menu, no entree, and smilingly request "just water" at least once a month to allow us non-kid-included-date-night regularly!
          But Mike and I were not completely clueless.  We did include the old well-worn vows in our marriage ceremony....right after our handmade ones :).  And I admit,  it  felt like the ones we wrote to one another....were more promises than actual "VOWS".  This may have been because the old-fashioned, traditional vows were the "final" ones said.  And.... we had to do the "repeat after me" with them as well!   So they felt very vow-like and we really did say and mean them as "vows" not as promises.  Try it...have a minister ask you if  "you take this man/woman....to love, honor and cherish..for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, for richer and for poorer, till death do you part?" and tell me you are not aware of the vow-ness of it?  Handwritten vows...are more like the shadow of a traditional vow.  Vows are glue.  And glue is needed in marriage. Because marriage is, in a nutshell,  wonderful...and hard.  Heartwarmingly joy-filled...and hard.  Humorous...and hard.  Very very very...hard,  and wonderful.   Marriage was the hardest thing (second only to parenting) that I've ever done.  And the most fulfilling.  Which means.....Vows...matter.  Yet today...in marriages, it doesn't seem that the seriousness of a VOW versus a "promise" is grasped much.  So the traditional vow is omitted entirely and the handwritten "promises" disguised as vows now take the stage in many ceremonies.
       And the result.....well.  It's pretty obvious.  Just think about the feelings of love in those new vows. For myself....I absolutely adored the rose-colored glasses phase.  I can still reflect back on those years and they literally will make me smile.  Such fun it was!  So cool!  Remembering how it felt to have Mike would touch my hand ....and electricity would shoot right through me!  It was awesome.  I was so IN love.  All the moments of life crammed  with thoughts of Mike. Ahhhhhhhhh.
The feeling lasted years.  I loved life and the view from my rose-colored glasses was phenomenal.       The fading from deep rose to rose to kinda rosey ...to pink...and then....kinda pinkish...and so on was not something that happens  BAM! Rose colored glasses don't just fall off one day. Nope.  I was at home, doing my usual marriage & work & caring for the kids life...and wearing my palish-pink glasses when the thought came.  And this thought or better...realization...actually caught me a bit offguard.  Maybe that's why I remember it so well.  Sitting in my home on west 2nd street, I was thinking about my marriage and suddenly recognized  I had  to "decide" to love Mike.  Not rely on feeling it. But decide to actively love.  A decision. I don't recall  the Whys and Whats of my life at that time that made me realize.. I had to make loving Mike a decision and not just a feeling.  And so...I decided  "to decide" to love Mike.... for my entire life.  An active verb vs a passive one.  I remember reflecting about our vows...and it was the traditional ones that came to mind. Even then...I couldn't really remember the handwritten ones that we'd actually come up with!   Other than, naturally, the "obey" part of mine...probably because I still wrestled with that.  :). But the traditional vows were always easy to recall. And so...I decided.  To love.    And...subsequently... the lenses of my glasses changed. Still colored .....but with depth.  And as years passed...definitely richer and more varied hues.
      Several years later,  Mike and Iwere at a hotel and there was a wedding going on beneath our window on the hotel lawn.  We listened in on their ceremony.  I heard the couple excitedly recite their handmade "vows".  Sweet!  And I waited for the traditional ones.  Only to hear the minister "now pronouce (them) man and wife".   I was really saddened.  Mike and I sat and really talked about it.  I think the fact they omitted the traditional vows made such an impression upon me that day because
the "decision to love"  is best found within those "old traditional" vows.  The decision to love is  actually in the  "read between the lines" of the traditional vows.  And...most probably why arranged marriages have been historically so successful.  Unlike non-arranged marriages, where the start of it is based upon the feelings of love.  Hence the dismayed surprise when the feeling fades.  Arranged marriages make the decision to love/feel love/decide TO love at the very start.  With the decision to love, the lenses you wear when you view your mate truly do transform.  You wear glasses that  allow you to see this nuanced rainbow of colors showing the good, bad, ugly and....the good...and more good...and, again,  good.  This latter focus always on the good requires some lens adjustments...like  bifocals!  :).   You actively choose what part of the lens to look through.  Yet you also find God involved. For when you do that...the rest of the lens continues to change to deeper and rosier hues.  Every marriage union eventually requires each member recognize and make "a decision" to love. One not based upon feelings. Either at the start like an arranged marriage...or in the middle.  When they don't both do so...divorce results.
       Thus...along comes this other verb... "persevere".   And.... with persevering...comes the vows!  Essentially then...you come full circle.  That is marriage.  Love...decision....perseverence...Increased love...continued decision....more perseverence  (repeat). 

Marriage perseveres through....  better and worse, financial stability and mounting debts/circling drains  (eg: richer and poorer :),    Through sickness and good health.   Until....at the very end.....the one vow  that is left,  is the one vow that shows you made it through all the others......  Till death do us part.
         So I hope my girls, when they get married, include the old traditional vows.  And have a simple gold band as their wedding rings.  The latter....for alot of extra not yet mentioned reasons!  
           Society today puts out this temptation to have alot of bling on your rings.  It's indiscriminate..bling both the engagement and the wedding ring!   But ...not always!  It used to be that the wedding ring was always just a band of gold.  And with a simple band of gold (yep...think back to the song from the 60's or early 70's.  I really liked that song!)....the vow pretty much slaps you in the face when you look at it.  But nowadays.... how much bling is in a ring has become equated with "how deep is his love"  ....or at the very least, his pocketbook ;). 
        Yet, when the wedding ring is all bling....the vow is hidden. I believe the vow is what God intended us to look at daily.  Heaven knows how many times I see my fingers each day.  And therefore the ring upon my left one.  Think about it.  God had the Israelites put up altars whenever HE , in a sense, came through for them against all odds.   The altars were meant to be constant reminders to the israelites to "persevere" ... To remind them,  HE had come through and...so they could trust HE would come through.    Reminders are very important to God.   He knows they're essential to us weak, forgetful humans.  We require upfront and upclose reminders! A wedding ring was meant to serve as a reminder of THE vow YOU made.     Not a promise. Not a conversation. But a vow.    Vows are like writings upon iron tablets.  Promises are written on rosepetals.   When I look at a gold band, ...I hear in my head.... "I promise to love, honor and cherish, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health...till death do us part". Those are vows.  Vows with iron. Vows that get you through marriage.  Vows that require the decision to love, not just the feeling of love...to be within a marriage relationship.   While sweet...really....sooooooo  sweeet!  The vows nowadays such as ...."I will always hold your hand even when I'm angry" are as flimsy as muslim is to iron.  And marriage requires iron to survive...it's hard.          
     When I reflect back on my 25 years of marriage to Mike, and how terribly much I miss him since he died....Satan hurls at me memories when we angrily (me mostly....Mike more rarely, though sainthood-worthyness was neither of us ) threw out hurtful words at each other.   Even worse is the memory of times when the word, divorce,  was, sadly....thrown into a heated argument.  True, I comfort myself that I used it much like one would use ice cold water upon someones head...as a shock technique.  If  Mike had ever turned my technique back upon myself ...and said divorce should be considered....I know my world would've dissolved into shattered shards of glass.  And....in a weird way, knowing Mike wouldn't do so was the reason I could hurl that most hurtful of all words at him.  Because I KNEW Mikes attitude toward our wedding VOWS.  I knew and he knew I knew.  And he knew I felt the same.  We both respected and acknowledged we were bound not by promises...but by Vows. To God. And to each other.  We knew our marriage would be TDDUP.  FB&FW, IS&IH, FR&FP.  Even if we didn't "like it".    And all this is not to say hurling hurtful words...and especially that most hurtful of all words is ever right!  The word divorce should be struck from all arguments between those united with Vows before GOD.  But my point is this...Marriage is hard. Mountaintops and valleys.  Persevere in a valley and you WILL end up together and holding hands...on a mountain top.  But...there will also be another valley...and another mountaintop ahead. And so on.  That is the journey of marriage.  That is what the vows are all about.  When you're in a valley...you need to decide to love and decide to persevere....and the vows you will do so are evident in a gold band upon your finger. And the vow before God brings HIM into the journey.  Which means....quite simply...that you WILL find the mountaintop. GOD is in control of your journey.
      And the vows I said 25 years ago still are serving me even now.  Reflecting upon them and the fact that Mike and I fulfilled each one.... helps to mute the raw hurt that is my heart.  A deep consolation that penetrates to my very core.  Its amazing that the vows from 25 years ago being fulfilled have this sweetness that is their gift to me now....when I am without Mike.
     One of my most precious and tender memories I have of Mike during his illness took place a few weeks before he died. He'd lost so much weight his wedding ring was falling off his finger. Mike had never removed it...not even once in all the years we'd been married.  We were talking about whether to tie yarn onto it or tape to make it fit and I reminded him that I had had his ring engraved on the inside and did he remember that ...and what it had said.  Mike did remember it had been engraved but neither of us were 100% sure what I'd had written.  So he took it off and we peered at the inscription. The irony was crushing.  Besottedly wearing my rose-colored glasses, I had engraved what I considered to be a truly romantic thought inside Mikes ring. I used our nicknames.  Mike sat in the recliner, hair pretty much gone, gauntness where strength had always reigned supreme, young ...so darn young....and I perched on the arm of the recliner while we both put on reading glasses and used a magnifying glass to read the inscription which said,  "Mr. Man -  TDDUP - Weasal".   Despite the overwhelming irony...which brought tears.  We also smiled through them and talked about how it was that we had fulfilled each of our vows.  Each one. To the last...to the TDDUP.  THAT moment....is etched permanently in my mind and heart.
        So Mikes plain, bent up, simple gold band wedding ring and the fact we'd fulfilled the traditional vows brings to me....11 months, two days, and 43 minutes since Mike died.... a feeling of gratitude.  Gratefulness toward God.  That we did, with His help and grace, persevere and fulfill those vows.  There's this feeling of thankfulness that actually wells up inside of me when I reflect upon it....that we did fulfill them. Each one.  So...on my personal journey, I discovered that there's two emotions that result from vow fulfillment.  Gratitude and thankfulness.  Both towards our Maker.  Who ultimately is the one who gets you through marriage....and why I believe He wants you to be equally yoked so that He may do so.
        Vows in marriage are like a strong and lasting wind.  Hurtful words and arguments and the parts of marriage that are tough....are like leaves that break off trees and swirl about briefly ...and then are  swept from view by the wind which blows sometimes gently....sometimes fiercely...but  is always in motion.