Marriage

Once upon a time (2002) in a faraway land (Nashville), two young ones (24 & 30) got married. It sounds so cliché to say that we didn’t know what we were doing, that we had no idea what was coming. But also, I want to say that there was a lot we did know back then.

Our wedding was cheap and sweet. We had a potluck reception, with a keg of beer, and a laptop playlist. I wore an 80$ grey satin dress, and a friend gave us flowers. One of the things I am still deeply grateful for is that we used one of the liturgies from the New Zealand Prayer Book. These were our actual vows:

I take you to be my (husband/wife).
All that I have I offer you;
what you have to give I gladly receive;
wherever you go I will go.
You are my love.
God keep me true to you always
and you to me.

The vows we made to each other were taken from the book of Ruth, where one woman says to another- Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.

Now, I just gotta say those are some good vows. We wouldn’t be poly for another 17 years or so, but I’m not sure we could have chosen better if we had known exactly what was coming.

One of the things that I have thought about a lot since being kicked out of the church is marriage as a covenant relationship. Because God reworks her covenants. Over and over again, across the whole sweep of scripture, Love looks at her people and says let’s try this differently.

Be vegetarian, don’t be vegetarian, this is your land, you have to get circumcised, it’s all got to happen in the temple, a whole thing where the relationship has a lot of animal sacrifice, then oh, here’s Jesus, never mind about the kosher thing, or the circumcision thing. To be a Christian, you just sort of have to believe in a God who can roll with it. A God who looks at the realities of the ones she loves and finds a way to stay in relationship.

The terms and details shift, sure, but through all those changes God’s love is central. The covenant serves the relationship.

It’s been almost three years now since I was forced out of the church because of the shape of my family. I am in a much better, more healed place than I was, but I can’t yet say that I am grateful. The church was not interested in my actual marriage. No one ever asked my husband how he was doing. There was no curiosity or compassion. No desire whatsoever to renegotiate my relationship with the church.

If I had divorced my husband, I could have saved my ordination. A few years earlier, when I shared about the changes in my marriage with one of my dearest friends, who is a pastor, she told me, without hesitation, that we needed to get divorced. I have had many friends get divorced. All of them, even the best divorces, were hard. I absolutely believe that people should be allowed to get divorced if that is the best thing for them. But I also don’t believe it is the only option for two changing humans who love each other, and I also believe it should be voluntary.

The church claims to worship a God who reworks covenants, who re-betroths, who tears down boundary markers, and declares all foods clean and all people welcome. The church that told the world “If it’s not about Love its not about God” looked at my renegotiated marriage and said: Not this. Not you. Not here. The original terms only. I still believe that God loves me, but it is very clear that the church did not.

This weekend we celebrated our 24th wedding anniversary. We went out to an amazing dinner, walked around a neighborhood, found some great sidewalk scores, hung some curtains, and said goodnight.

We believe that we have kept our wedding vows perfectly. I am sad that the church never asked, because I am proud of us. We have the marriage we want, a covenant we chose, and we have stayed true to each other.