Things we can't share (and are totally happy about it): AKA 9 Years of Wedded Bliss

Show of hands.  How many of you, like me and Tara, have a running #thingswecan'tshareonFacebook list?

That list includes hilarious slip-ups, memorable comments, and intimate things that -- on one hand -- we immediately want to share when they happen for the inevitable reactions we know we'd get.  But then we remember in the nick of time that we have reputations.

Filters are kind of important.  We use them for drinking water, air purification, and for internet content.  They protect us primarily from bad stuff getting in.  But they can also protect us from overexposing, venting, or damaging our personal image.

As I was working on our 2020 Christmas letter to friends and family this past December, trying to whittle the year down to some of the major events worthy of recounting, I was reminded that there are so many precious moments that Tara and I share.  So many inside jokes and silly memories -- things that still make us belly-laugh when we recall them, but things that only we would truly find funny, cute, or worthy of recounting.  They also happen, in many cases, to be things that would also be deeply embarrassing if they actually made their way onto social media...

And all of them are things we wouldn't trade for anything.

We live in a world that abides by the creed, "Pics or it didn't happen."  So we share everything for the validation.  We overexpose because we live for the likes.  All of our experiences feel more legitimate and exciting when they're community experiences.  We video and share our kids' special and embarrassing moments, because we like to know that we're not alone in our parenting struggles.  We broadcast our "failure to properly adult" to reassure ourselves that other people are lazy and irresponsible too.  Every nook and cranny of our lives, no matter how ugly, can become spotlight avenues for exploring our sense of self-worth.

Thriving off of the opinions and reactions of others might fall into a Type A personality block in the sociologist's book, but in biblical terms it's actually called the fear of man (Prov 29.15) and it can truly undermine our worship of God and our ability to properly love, value, and serve the people God has placed in our lives.  After all, instead of using others to stroke our own egos, our primary objective as Christians is to model the missional mindset of Jesus, which is to serve (Mark 10.45).

This is just a short little post directed to husbands and wives, intended to think together with you about the benefits of protecting certain things and treasuring secret moments with your spouse.  If you're married and reading this, remember that the #thingswecan'tshareonFacebook list is a special thing for you and your spouse.  Not everything in your marriage needs to be proclaimed from the social media rooftops.  There are so many private things between me and Tara, special things afforded to us by our marriage covenant, that are privileged moments.  You and your spouse would be better served protecting those things by sharing them only between the two of you, than by giving other people windows into the special things that should stay between you.

Today, Tara and I are celebrating our 9th wedding anniversary.  Throughout the course of our decade-long relationship, we've been recording our memories and moments -- our road trips, house purchases, and coffee dates -- but it wasn't until 2018 when a certain little boy came into our lives, and then a little girl two years later, that our Photos libraries truly began exploding our cloud storage.  We are certainly guilty of overexposing our kids on Facebook (I mean, who could blame us?  Our kids are darn cute), but even in that realm, we would be wise to beware of how much we conflate real life and social media.  Sometimes the precious moments we have are cheapened by sharing them; sometimes the value of a memory is found in the bounds of privacy.

Maybe at the heart of this post is a statement about maintaining an appropriate level of marital and familial transparency.  On one hand, I believe that Christian marriages and families are called to a community of accountability.  It's called the Church, and being part of it means surrendering my rights to my independence.  It's critical that we are transparent with one another so that we don't fall into undiagnosed or unaddressed patterns of sin.  But at the same time, there is also a sacredness to be preserved in our marriages, a privacy and protection warranted by having and holding none other from this day forward.  Over-publicizing on a public platform is often the natural result of over-publicizing in smaller settings: how much of my marriage am I comfortable sharing with close friends?  Family?  Do I have a tendency to complain about my spouse, our children, the challenges we face as couples, etc -- all without my spouse knowing what I'm revealing, much less being comfortable with that level of detail?  Are our divulgences TMI, or are they sensitive to the fact that our marriages are to be upheld in honor, mutual respect, humility, and propriety?

So here's a post on social media about the stuff you shouldn't post on social media.  What a world we live in.  Would you join me in striving to protect what is precious in your marriage by seeking to love and respect your spouse, preserving your special intimacy and allowing no outside influence or internal friction to damage your unity?

Live together, laugh together, rejoice together, worship together.  Share what's appropriate with others, ask for help when you are lost, and commit to having the same conversation again and again -- if that's what's necessary to persevere.  Relish the things you can share with absolutely no one but your spouse.  Remember the command of Hebrews 13.4, which demands the marital union and all the intimate things that go along with it should be protected and upheld.

That's been my goal for the last 9 years.  Lord willing, Tara and I will maintain that for the next 9 and beyond.

Sweetheart, thanks for laughing at me and with me all this time.  I love you.

February 25, 2012

Stepping Stones

On this day, two years ago, I stood before the woman who was about to become my wife.

There was a unique type of nervousness in my stomach as I removed from my breast pocket the crumpled paper with my vows, smoothing out the creases in them and in my thoughts.

It wasn't because there were over 300 of our friends and family assembled, watching us with eager expectation.  I've never really been a "crowd person," which is ironic since I play in a band, but in that moment, the people in the sanctuary didn't even exist.  The wedding party didn't exist.  It was just the two of us - me and Tara, standing in a spotlight suspended in the inky blackness of a vacuum.  She: lovely, young, and inimitably graceful in her wedding gown; me: lanky and somewhat groomed for a change, dressed in the wrinkled slacks that we (she) still lament(s) not ironing; she, smiling ear-to-ear; me, pensive but overjoyed.

It wasn't because what we were about to do would take wholehearted commitment.  The road to our wedding day had been an uphill affair, but the good kind - more a race against time than a trek through difficult terrain.  We had worked out all the details in two months, which was an insanely short engagement, but exactly what both of us wanted.  Why belabor what we were both ready to embrace?  The steps to approach the altar had been natural, transitional, and necessary.

I cleared my throat in that absolute silence, and this is what I said to my wife:

Tara, I think it’s safe to say that we’ve reached the point in our lives which we both doubted would come.  In the course of our story, we’ve spent time together, time apart, and time together once again.  God led each of us down unexpected paths, teaching us while we were apart to rely upon His sovereignty and to sacrifice what we want for what He requires - all in preparation for coming together once again.

Tara, I love you because you make me want to love Jesus more.  You have shown me over and over your strengths, your work ethic, your patience, and your indelible grace.  You have given yourself unerringly to serving me.  And so I stand before you today, right now, because I am ready and willing to dedicate my entire life to you.

 There are some things I’d like to covenant to do, today and forever, before all of our friends and family, and before God Himself.  Here goes.

Tara, I will seek to love you unconditionally, striving for patience and grace on the challenging days, and relishing the good days with joy. 

According to God's holy ordinance, I will cherish our love and friendship - for better or worse, for richer or poorer, and in sickness and in health - not because I have to, but because I choose to. 

I will live first for the glory of our Savior, so that you can do the same. 

I will partner with you on every task we undertake, not expecting more of you than I am willing to give myself. 

I will tell you when you’re wrong, because I need you to do the same for me. 

I will at least... try... to like country music.  Even though they all sound like Brad Paisley. 

I will seek to be an exemplary, Christ-minded leader to you and our future children.  All thirty-three of them. 

I will listen when you speak, weep when you weep, and rejoice when you rejoice, in the same way that God himself “bears our concerns on His heart.” 

Knowing that I will fail you, I promise to learn from my mistakes and do my best not to repeat them. 

Tara, I will provide for your needs, spiritually, physically, and emotionally.  I will protect, nurture, and sacrifice.  I will seek our best, and not my best.  I will always hold you when you need to cry. 

See, I wasn't nervous because I feared I couldn't fulfill these promises.  I knew even in that moment that I would fail and need forgiveness, but that's part of what marriage is.  Mistakes are just more stepping stones in the path across the river: only harmful if you don't move forward, because then your footholds begin to sink.

The truth is, I was nervous because this was truly the moment of becoming an adult.  18 and 21, first cars and first apartments, promotions and responsibilities - all of these mean nothing.  The moment a man takes his wife by the hand and steps up to the altar is the moment all childish things are truly left behind.  It is surrendering the "freedom" of singleness for the responsibility of togetherness.  It is surrendering "mine" for "ours."  It is humbling one's self to the point of being a full-time servant, the way Jesus did for us.

This is why I was nervous.  Because life was about to cease being about me, and I held a doctorate in selfishness.  I'd proven time and again that, although I claimed to love Christ above all else, I often yielded to my own desires before His.

But I wanted us.  In fact, I'd wanted us since I'd first met Tara - four years ago, across a breakup, tons of soul-searching, and ultimately getting back together once again.  We'd been through a lot - together and apart - and it had all lead to this joyful moment.

Stepping stones.

It's a journey we'll continue for the rest of our lives.  Except now we are blessed to travel the path together.

To close my vows, I sang this song.  It's nothing remarkable, but to us it is every bit the encapsulation of the promises we made each other on our wedding day.  I'd been working on the composition even before I asked her to marry me, and labored over the lyrics until the night before the wedding day itself.

This was how I sealed my vows, and continues to be a reminder of how I will strive to uphold them every day, every year, from now until death do us part.

Happy Anniversary, Tara.

~*~

If the thought had ever crossed your mind

It was just a guess, just a glimpse of time

We all know the servant rules the proud

The stoic breathes, the poet laughs out loud

But we

Are none of these

Are none of these

Patience is a virtue set in gold

The lesson learned; the joy to have, to hold

The more you have, the less that you will know

This periphery, or the warmth that fills your soul

We, oh we

Should know by now

Should know by now

We are waiting for our time

Time will always be ahead of us

This plan was never mine, I lost control

Our broken worlds, like sheep beyond the fold

But blessed are the ones who learn to mourn

You’re always beautiful in Sunday clothes

With God as our witness, and all of these

We stand as fractured jars, so incomplete

It's a mystery: these shards become as one

Let me carry you, and you can carry me

We, oh we

Have stood so long

Have stood for so long

We have waited for our time

The time has come to be

We have waited for You, Lord

You have always been

And You will always be

Beside us

~*~