Eavesdropping

7:00 am. Sitting in an almost empty classroom with several other students trying to study for a Biology midterm in half an hour. Two young girls in their late teens sitting somewhere behind me begin talking.

“My boyfriend asked me to marry him, says Girl 1.

“You’re not gonna do it are ya,” says asks Girl 2

“Na, Marriages fail over half the time and I just don’t want to go through that, I just wanna move in, that way, when it doesn’t work out, no one gets hurt,” replies Girl 1.

“Makes sense,” observes Girl 2

I try to continue focusing on my upcoming Biology test, but my brain hurts from the incredible lack of thought contained in that short conversation. These poor girls are a product of their generation, but it still pains me that they have learned so many wrong lessons so young.

Even worse, Girl 1 will be living a self-fulfilling prophesy. She will experience marriage failure and relationship breakups because she wrongly believes that life just happens to you and there is nothing you can do about it.

It saddens me that she will probably give her heart to man after man, losing a little bit each time a relationship dies. Living together married or unmarried; broken relationships destroy a little bit of your heart each time, ultimately leaving you cold and cynical.

I wanted to tell these girls that it doesn’t have to be this way. A lifetime commitment is still possible, even in this day and age. It just takes the right tools.

I didn’t say anything to these girls, but I should have. I’m not sure they would have listened or even appreciated the input, considering I was eavesdropping on their conversation.

This is a cultural issue in America today. We don’t take marriage seriously enough. I just listened to the interview with Kate from John and Kate plus Eight. She was speaking about how people change, about how she meant her vows back when she said them, but things are different now. It is as if she was completely helpless to events unfolding.

Study after study has shown how important a stable marriage is to the mental and physical health of the couple as well as to the mental, physical, and emotional health of any children involved. We must take this seriously as a society.

Marriage must not be a lark, something you jump into because of giddy feelings of puppy love. It must involve some work by both parties as well as families and friends supporting them. If you are considering marriage, get educated, get premarital counselling. Observe your spouse-to-be around their family and friends. If you don't like something about them at that time, they won't change after the wedding. After the marriage, join a married couples group and talk out the issues before they get personal. Marriage is fun, but it does take work. The tools are out there, we just need to unpack the toolbox.

My wife and I have committed to not end up like our parents. Over thirteen years, we have been in married couples groups, worked through personal studies, gotten counseling, and continually renewed our commitments to each other and to God.

We have watched many of our fellow couples follow a similar pattern and succeed. We have also watched many others give in to selfishness, boredom, dishonesty, and lack of effort. They aren’t together any more.

It can be done.

I wish I had spoken to those two girls. Someone needs to spread messages of hope.

Two Movies

This weekend, I watched two movies that are worth comment. Life just isn’t like the movies. Usually. But, sometimes, they mirror real life in a way that can be exquisitely raw.

The first movie that I saw was ‘Last Kiss.’ It was a date night movie for my wife and I. Earlier in the week, we were at Wally World, getting new shoes for my daughter. After about a half an hour looking at shoes and realizing that the girls weren’t anywhere near done, I wandered over to the $3 movie bin. (Hey, if a man can’t spend $3 on a movie for his wife, what’s this world coming to?) I found this movie that billed itself as a romantic comedy and it had the guy from ‘Scrubs’ in it, a show my wife likes. What could go wrong?

Everything.

This movie is agonizingly close to reality. It is a movie about relationships, broken ones. It was not the ‘romantic comedy’ that it billed itself as. No, this movie is about the destruction of relationships. Marriages fell apart, relationships were destroyed, parents fought over their children. There was infidelity and dysfunctional relationships right and left. I've seen far to many destroyed relationships of close friends and people I care about, to appreciate this movie.

Save your $3 and buy your wife a big chocolate candy bar.

I would recommend this movie to one group of people. I believe that I might just send it back to my old Bible college to the counseling department. It should be a class assignment: each student must take one of the characters and describe the process for counseling this person. The people in the movie are so real that the process of counseling them would be great practice.

The second movie that I saw was also on a date night. This time, it was daddy-daughter date night. I took my little girl out to see the movie of her choice and for a little gelato afterwards. She chose the movie, ‘Up’.

This movie, I would recommend. It too is about relationships. The core of the story is about a man and a woman who get married and grow old together. She dies in the first 20 minutes of the movie and the rest of the movie involves him fulfilling a promise to her while learning to find other relationships in his life.

I am not ashamed to say that I cried in this movie. The writers do such an excellent job of making you love this couple, it’s hard not to cry when you see him alone. It really strikes to the heart of my own fears. I love my wife. A lot. And, I recognize the awful truth that one day, one of us will go before the other one.

Every love story has a sad ending. There is a deep truth there that was at the heart of each of these movies. Each movie showed the pain and grieving that comes with the loss of a relationship. Unfortunately, we live in a society where the first movie is a better example of relationships than the second.

I am distressed at the state of marriage in our world. Life is short, painfully so. We have the briefest time on this earth to live and love. Why, then, would you waste it being miserable and hateful to someone.

The truth is, you can spend a lifetime growing together in a healthy relationship, facing down your problems and learning to work together OR, you can spend a lifetime dealing with the baggage from a broken relationship. Either way, you spend a lifetime with that person.

My wife and I both come from broken homes. We could have learned the lesson that relationships are disposable. They aren’t and we didn’t. Instead, we both decided that our marriage was going to last through it all. Our goal is 75 years and then we’ll renegotiate.

We’ve lasted 13 years so far, through some really tough times and through some really great times. We’ve had the 2nd Year lull and the 7 year itch. We’ve had struggles with having children and the delight of adoption. We’ve had arguments that shook the walls and we’ve laughed together, played together, cried together, and loved together.

Relationships are hard. I won't lie to you. You will never hurt another person in this world as much as the person that you truly love. To grow in love, you must be vulnerable, and when you are vulnerable, you will get hurt. Working through that hurt as a partnership, opening up to each other, and growing old together will make for an adventure that outshines any movie script.

Healthy relationships require a daily choice to grow closer to each other. They require a regular dose of humility. They require constant care and vigilance. Long lasting, loving relationships don't just happen. They require effort. Trust me; it is worth it.

Both of these movies, ‘Last Kiss’ and ‘Up’ hold the same lesson: a healthy relationship is priceless and a dysfunctional one is worthless – it’s your choice which one you will live with.

I think I need to go watch a guy movie now.

“For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.” Genesis 2:24.