Mutual Joy & Perfect Love
Don’t forget to check out my husband’s companion piece on his blog here!
I used to wonder how couples came to have “their song.” In July 2019, Austin and I celebrated our 6 months dating anniversary with a dinner date at Jakes on the Water, the restaurant where a little over a year later we would host our rehearsal dinner. There was live entertainment that night, and the band started to play Ed Sheeren’s “Perfect.”
“Darling, I don’t deserve this, you look perfect tonight,” Austin sang along under his breath to me. “ It’s true, you know,” he said, in the same quiet whisper.
Photo credit: Benjamin Carlson
The next month we jetted off to England to celebrate the wedding of some wonderful friends from my time living there. While the couple started off their first dance alone, they invited all couples to eventually join them on the dance floor. Once again, the sweet melody of “Perfect” filled our ears, and Austin and I found ourselves dancing together for the very first time. From that point on, I think we both knew that “Perfect” was our song. Throughout our engagement, and even to this day, spontaneously we’d sing it to each other and find ourselves dancing around the kitchen or living room. My favorite memory of this song is, of course, on our wedding day itself, surrounded by our immediate family, as my brother played his own rendition for our First Dance. We looked into each others’ eyes, unable to stop smiling, because it was true, everything was absolutely perfect. It didn’t matter than the pandemic had made us change our wedding plans dramatically. There were so many important people in our lives who couldn’t be there, and as much as we wished they could, it still didn’t take away from the perfection of that day. Our love, consecrated by the love of Christ just a little while earlier, was stronger than anything life could throw at us.
When we got engaged, I knew that our life together would be full of the unexpected. Whose life isn’t? I knew it would have ups and downs, as this world always does. That said, unexpected challenges rose up fast for us, namely in the form of the COVID19 pandemic. In a matter of weeks, the world that we knew was gone. I wondered what financial position the university I worked for would be in, and would I, like so many others, be laid off? We worried about the spread of the virus, and whether it would overwhelm our rural healthcare system. We prayed for our friends and family members who worked in healthcare, and every day put on that mask and exposed themselves to others. And of course we put our wedding plans on hold. Yet, amid all the anxiety, those things in life that are unshakeable became vividly clear: our love for each other. Our love only grew through that uncertainty, as we held onto each other. As hard as the world could be, loving each other was natural and easy as breathing. And our love continued to fill our lives with impossible amounts of joy.
Photo credit: Nathaniel Brown
50 days ago, we took that love and that joy, and, in the presence of God and our families, committed to it for the rest of our shared life. The Episcopal marriage liturgy is a series of ancient prayers, familiar to me from witnessing several of my own friends say those same vows and prayers in the same church over the years. One line jumped out to me (and to Austin, who shared his thoughts here) : “The union of husband and wife in heart, body, and mind is intended by God for their mutual joy.” That phrase mutual joy truly stuck with me. It reminded me of all the anxiety in the world during our engagement, and how the love we shared allowed us to latch onto joy, let it fill us. Now, as husband and wife, the love that we share has been blessed by God, perfected by His holy love:
In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. -1 John 4: 10-12
As husband and wife, we are able to love each other as Christ loves the Church, as the source of our love is found in Him. More amazing to me still, is that we love in response to God’s love for us. We don’t need to earn this love; it is given. In the same way, our marriage is not a contractual agreement where we must earn each others’ love; we give it freely. God’s desire for our marriage is our mutual joy, to meet Him in the love we have for each other, and to let that love and joy perfect our shared life.
Love is a strange, powerful thing. It mystifies me every day, how it fills me with a wild joy, how each day it grow deeper and stronger than anything I could have ever imagine. It is as wide and deep and high and broad as creation itself, and each morning it is miraculously wider and deeper and higher and broader still. When I see Austin, I still get those fairytale like butterflies in my stomach. His smile will always make my day. Life still feels like we’re in the middle of a romantic musical, singing love songs and dancing to invisible orchestral accompaniment. How can we not? We are living in the best part of the fairytale, the happily ever after. And if this seems impossible or unreal, in a way it is, because this is no ordinary, human love. It is a love that has its source in heaven. That said, it has become our reality. No matter the challenges life throws at us, we won’t be defined by them. We will be defined by the love we share. It is that ineffable Love that perfects our life, just as our very love is perfected by the love of Christ:
So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. 1 -John 4:16-17
Photo credit: Benjamin Carlson
In any other context, 50 days would sound like a long time. Yet in marriage, those days seem like they passed in the blink of an eye, while simultaneously our lives before marriage was an entirely different life. My father in law called this the ‘time warp,’ and he’s right. There’s something about marriage that makes what came before feel like an entirely different life. Marriage has changed us, made us, perfected us.
It seems fitting that “Perfect” became our song. It illuminated something for me about the nature of love, the nature of our love. As flawed people in a broken world, we are imperfect. Yet, true love is something unearthly, something divine. This world still awaits reunion with God, it awaits perfection. In marriage, in a love consecrated with the eternal love of God, heaven and earth meet, and our shared life truly is perfect. The ups and downs of life will never shake our love. Assured of this, it is my joy to take my husband’s hand and to love him more and more with each passing day, each day as perfect and joyful as when we became husband and wife.
