getting married

We say when I get married.  Which is, perhaps, why we are in the trouble we are in about marriage to begin with.  We are not supposed to enter marriage with the idea of what we are getting on the forefront of our brains.  We give ourselves in marriage. 

Marriage can't be what is in it for me.  Marriage must be an outpouring of self.  And, it would appear, that we are learning how to do that our entire married lives.  I have yet to meet a couple who, even after thirty or fifty years of marriage, sits back on their laurels and says, yep, we've figured it out.

Its perpetual formation.  Its ongoing RCIA in life.  It is not a getting, a having, a place of arrival. Marriage is a place of letting go, of giving and a place of departure.  A beginning.  Not just of a new couple, but of a new relationship with God, and with a husband or wife.

It’s a new relationship, even, with one's own nuclear family.  Our position has shifted, our loyalties, really, have shifted.  Everything has changed.  I have found that the very best way for me to have a lousy day and make oatmeal out of my marriage and make all of my relationships within my family difficult is to wake up in the morning and think thoughts along the lines of "what's in it for me?"

To misquote John F. Kennedy,

"Ask not what your marriage can do for you,
ask what you can do for your marriage."

Or something like that.