Christian Marriage: Chapter 20; Conclusion

Meditation 20:

LETTING GO AND LETTING GOD

"This word came to Jeremiah from the LORD: Rise up, be off  to the potter's house; there I will give you my message. I went down to the potter's house and there he was, working at the wheel. Whenever the object of clay which he was making turned out badly in his hand, he tried again, making of the clay another object of whatever sort he pleased. Then the word of the Lord came to me: Can I not do to you, house of Israel, as this potter has done? says the LORD. Indeed, like clay in the hands of the potter, so are you in my hand , house of Israel."

(Jer 18, 1-6)

''Love one another as I have loved you."

(Jn 15, 12b)

''I am the vine, you are the branches. He who lives in me and I in him will produce abundantly , for apart from me you can do nothing."

(Jn 15, 5 )

Meditation

We end where we began, with the call to love one another as Jesus loves us. Hopefully, the meditations have inspired steps toward a deeper involvement with Jesus and with one another and, thereby, with Father and Spirit.

There can, of course, be no final word about a journey into the unknown with the risen Christ. But my German heritage urges me to tie together everything I have said, or, if I acknowledge my family's alcoholic heritage, perhaps I feel compelled to protect my backside by making everything perfectly clear. At any rate, I offer a summary which brings the metaphors used in these meditations to bear on the dictum, "Let go and let God."

Though Jesus never used these words, the dictum describes the life he himself led, i.e., a life led by the Spirit and entrusted to the Father's providence. It therefore  applies to every interaction mad e sacred by a vow to love one another as Jesus loves each of us.

If you are so committed, you glimpsed what it meant to let go when you fell head over heels in love, engaged in vulnerable self­revel ations,  passed through perilous exchanges, experienced graced moments, and realized that small and simple interactions can be pregnant with infinity. Until your involvement with one another deepened, however, you could not know how desperately you controlled your own lives in cross-situations. Try as you might, you could neither own nor let go of the judgments and strategies embedded in your repertoire of long-practiced emotion al reactions.

Gradually or abruptly, events conspired to expose the voices in the committees in your heads and the agendas they justified. And as the illusions of romantic love were shattered, reactions which tapped each other's tangles left you confused, upset, or churning. Initially, the rule of buried feelings condemned you to silent struggles, momentary clashes, or enduring conflicts. Then, as you oscillated between fight and flight, you tried to transform the mounting pressure into misguided efforts to change yourselves or your loved ones, in the hope of restoring an illusory unity which was lost beyond recovery. But the harder you tried, the deeper your exhaustion and despair.

Though you refused to settle for the living death of separate lives, you could not let go and let God work without a struggle. It is always hard to abandon enterprises in which we have invested a good deal of ourselves, especially since the step hints of surrender. But repeated failures created an empty space in which the cries of your longings for intimacy with God and with your spouse could no longer be ignored. These longings could not speak as clearly as they did in romantic interactions, where the promise of new life in one another's love was almost palpable. But they called you to let go of the judgments and strategies which produced the living death of repeat performances, even if you had nothing with which to replace them. In effect, they voiced a mutual plea, "Love me, warts and all," which undermined the game of victim-villain and marked the path to a vulnerable honesty about thoughts and feelings .

The exhaustion, confusion, loneliness, and hopelessness that you felt were sure signs that you were broken persons whose self­sufficiency was almost exhausted. Free now to move within your deepest feelings, the indwelling Spirit urged you to an inner journey which was as perilous as any journey in response to the Father's providence. Jesus delineated the first step when he said that we must lose our lives in order to find them. In your everyday lives, the call confronted you whenever your spouse challenged the control you exerted through the masks, roles, expectations, defense mechanisms, and emotional reactions which you had woven into your self-created identity. As you grieved over the need to let go of that identity, you wrestled with God, as Jacob wrestled  with the angel, whenever you distanced yourself from sadness and pain by denial, anger, bargaining, and  depression. Still, these last gasps of self-sufficiency, by playing out the judgments and strategies which  led to a living death, pointed in the direction of new life. And even if you first yielded to your own exhaustion, you nonetheless let the Spirit lead you into the process of forgiveness.

The process of forgiving ourselves, others, and God begins when we grieve over the death of cherished illusions, inherited prejudices, role-accredited   expectations, manipulative or capitulative reactions, and self-created identities. We looked at this process through the spectacles offered by the metaphor of "Life in the FAST-lane." From that perspective, when we respectfully embrace and own our struggles with denial, anger, bargaining and depression, despite appeals to shame or guilt by voices in our heads, we admit, implicitly, that we cannot yet forgive, and we take  responsibility for our  present refusal  to  forgive. In   effect, we assert, "I can't forgive, and I won't." Or, in more objective terms, we acknowledge that genuine forgiveness begins with a refusal to rebury feelings and to ignore wounds, even though we have no replacements for these strategies. And as we grieve over real  or imaginary losses  and injuries,       we  let     go,   gradually,  of    the game of victim - villain.

As you escaped  from that game, you heard some equivalent of  the words of my young friend, "You can't change yourself; you have only to be willing to let God change you." Gradually, too, you admitted that you could not fix anyone else and that manipulative uses of rewards and punishments could not lead to deepening intimacy. Finally, you were ready to accept the fact that bad things happen to good people, that well-intentioned actions may have disastrous consequences, and, as an apt slogan says, "we're in this together." Even if you were not yet able to forgive, the desire to get on with your life together found expression in flawed efforts to put yourselves vulnerably in each other's care, and you began to accept mutual responsibility for every interaction between you. You continued to play the roles which contributed to your survival or prosperity in the social, political, and economic worlds, but you saw that their judgments and strategies led to indifference, hatred, or conflict in  intimate interactions.

With each step on this inner journey, you let the Spirit embrace you in your tangled depths. Yielding to the Spirit's intensely personal words of love, you were able to identify, embrace, and own long-buried pain, rage, anxiety, and shame as well as living care, compassion, joy, and playfulness. And once you owned the feelings which you had buried alive, their power over you was broken, and you could put them in the care of Jesus and of your spouse, vulnerably, as gifts which they could cherish.

In time, as your inner journeys intersected with your mutual journey to intimacy, you passed imperceptibly from acceptance to surrender. As long as you were unable to identify tangled feelings, crippled judgments, and counterproductive strategies, you could neither own them nor let go of the reactions they triggered. Now, owning them as your own, you lived in the present. There, you talked with the Father, Jesus, and Spirit about what you felt and what you felt like doing or saying. In this dialogue, you shared the temptations to fight or flight which were rooted in buried pain, anger, fear, and shame. And as long as you maintained this conscious contact with God, you could wait. In ways that sometimes surprised you, you trusted that Jesus would walk with you whenever the Father’s providence and the Spirit’s urgings showed you what you really wanted to do or say. In your detachment, you let God work in you and in your loved ones, without your help, until you found yourselves speaking freely, with a deep inner peace at odds with the conflict between you. And the words you spoke so vulnerably and respectfully could be heard, since they no longer tapped tangles which triggered repeat performances.

Most couples lurch through this intersecting period. So if you were ahead of your spouse in some dimensions of experience, you were probably behind in others. But as long as you both listened to the Spirit, you did not keep score and you did not pass wounding judgments grounded in self-serving comparisons. Instead, you spoke and acted with integrity, while leaving the outcome up to God. Thereby, you surrendered to whatever transformation  God was working within you, knowing that God was leading you to a fully human, uniquely personal existence.

Through this final step of surrender, you let God come to you through one another, as your longing for intimacy with God and with your loved ones found fulfillment in the small and simple events of daily life.

 A VOW WHICH INFORMS A MARRIAGE IN CHRIST

Before God and this Christian community, knowing that our deepening involvement will tap every tangle in each of us, I proclaim my love for you, and I vow to try, faithfully, to love you as Jesus loves you.

I know that we cannot anticipate or control what lies ahead.

I know, too, that we must pass through the denial, anger, bargaining, and depression that characterize the grieving process when we respond to Jesus' call to lose our lives that we might find them;

And I know myself too well to promise that I will never dig in, stubbornly, or strike out at you, angrily.

But I love you passionately, and I want to face everything in life with you.

So, in gratitude to the Father's providence which brought us together, I commit myself to you.

Knowing that our everyday involvement will bring out the worst as well as the best in us, I promise to see the Father's providence at work when we find ourselves at cross-purposes, and I promise to undertake the inner journey, to listen to the words of the indwelling Spirit, for I   know that the Lord's forgiving, healing, and transforming love will come to us through one another.

With awe and reverence, then, I receive you into my care, rejoicing in the incredible gift that you are to me; willing to be involved with your long buried, crazily tangled feelings.

With humble gratitude and considerable trepidation, I give myself, freely and vulnerably, into your care, asking God for the courage to be honest about what I feel and think and to leave you free to respond in your own way and time; and asking you to continue to keep me honest in my interactions with you.