The marital dynamic

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The marital dynamic

Author: Testimony,
"Love One Another!" 38/2017
Testimonies

A marriage is a living organism that is constantly changing and developing.

The marital dynamic

When my then four-yearold was watching a classic Disney fairy tale he noticed a certain regularity – which is that they always end with the pair of heroes dancing. Since he already understood that fables revolve around two people falling in love, he applied it to his own life and often asked that mama and daddy, like these two lovers, dance the obligatory dance. Just as Beauty and the Beast, or Snow White and her prince would do… It’s true that the stories of love that we know and that function in our culture are stories where the action leads us to two persons’ coming together. We observe their struggles and wait impatiently for the moment when they will finally come together and arrive at the altar. “And what’s next?” one might ask. Is the rest of the story so mundane that there’s no point in filming it? From the perspective of a 12 year marriage, I can say that, in fact, that’s the point when the crazy dance starts!

Along with my husband, I can confirm that a marriage is a living organism that is constantly changing and developing. As young people we had various ideas about our own futures, but each of us heard the call and wanted what the Lord had destined us for: family life with this one, and no one else. It is here that we find our happiness, here is where we fulfill our potential. Each of us has an internal conviction that this is what God wanted for us, and what’s more, in day to day life God confirms this to us, even in difficult moments, yes, this is what I wanted: I chose this person for you. So it was obvious to us that God should be invited into our family. We committed ourselves to the sacrament and we learn that this invitation should constantly be renewed. Sometimes it’s easy to lose track of this in the course of the daily routine. No sooner do we start living on our own terms, relying on our own strength, than prayer is lost; our paths start to diverge. God wants to enter into our union to consolidate it, and He helps us to understand this.

Young people just beginning their life together normally focus on the thought that everything will go “happily ever after” not knowing exactly what it should look like. Normally they expect that they will keep on admiring each other. I think that this idea was also present in my own way of thinking at some point. Fortunately, God steps in and puts this static picture into motion! His entry into our marriage is an unimaginable enrichment. Who else could write the kinds of screenplays for our life that God does? I never would have imagined that I would find myself on a mission with my family; that I would ever have a large family; that each of us would mutually inspire and influence each other’s development; that I, a cowardly girl, would take on so many different challenges as a mother and wife! I never imagined that God could make use of a marriage to accomplish such great personal development. It’s a good thing that the Lord didn’t reveal the whole plan for our vocation at the very beginning of this path. Then, many things would have scared us off. Led along like trusting children, but not knowing the steps we would be taking along the way, looking back, we see what a long distance we’ve travelled down that beautiful road.

Every additional child is a call to greater service and to push our own ego back to a position of lower priority

Somebody once described the Holy Trinity as the circulation of love among the three Divine Persons. I think that it is to form exactly this sort of an image that we are called. The best proof of this is the invitation to the joint creation of new life, to open oneself to the possibility. Doctors predicted that we could have problems in becoming parents, which left us in a certain state of apprehension. As it turns out, today we are parents of four children. When our first son was born, I realized what great trust God had placed in us. It also reminded me how God had at some point put the idea into my heart that that my future husband would be a good father for my children. I was embarrassed to think of how I had forgotten this promise and how I had doubted. This memory convinced me that He cares for us as spouses.

That was how an even greater movement got started, an even greater dynamic in our marriage. Children teach us to open up and forget about ourselves, since every additional child is a call to greater service and to push our own ego back to a position of lower priority. It wipes out the image that children are for our own satisfaction, and it makes us aware that they are obviously a gift but also a responsibility and that they are born for God’s purpose. At the same time, it is a revelation of our own and our spouse’s new dimension of love, our new characteristics – mother and father.

So if marriage is about the circulation of love, it’s important to have dialogue in it. People who love each other talk to each other. Learning how to talk to each other and to God is a constant process. Inasmuch as there are the two of us, when one of us fails to heed God’s voice, because the “power level is low”, then there is always the other. The desire to listen to Him unites us in attention to our sacramental life. It’s a beautiful thing when one spouse encourages the other, or helps to organize his or her time so that he or she might have some time for God, in the confessional for instance. In conversation or frank disposition towards each other we also find the means to let go of or resolve our conflicts. And when things get to be difficult, we can always go and complain to the One who thought this whole idea up…

Looking at the course of my life, I see God’s guidance in it, and I believe that I am right where God wants me to be. I admire and am enthralled by the marital dynamic into which He placed me. And if I can say so, it is also beautiful because it hasn’t lacked and won’t lack problems and challenges. Twelve years is a lot, but at the same time not much. We don’t know what life may yet have in store for us, but taking into account what we have already lived through in God’s presence allows us to trust that He will never cease to care for our little partnership – if we only let Him.

Source: https://loamagazine.org/archive/2017/2017-38/the-marital-dynamic

The article was published with the permission from "Love One Another!" in April 2021.