Day 1 - Us Is Invisible
When two people give themselves to the bond of marriage, a third and separate entity is created. A living, breathing entity of “us” is born when a man and woman marry. “Us” takes on a personality of its own that is not quite one spouse and not quite the other.
If my wife were to die, as much as I would miss her, I think I would miss us even more. I would miss the identity we have as individuals who give up part of ourselves to create us. When we married we not only became one, we also became three; her, me and us. The “us” of our marriage is what keeps it together because it’s dependent on my wife and me as individuals to keep it alive.
When a man and a woman exchange the vows of marriage and consummate that union, they covenant to no longer live for themselves, but for “us.” Over the course of a lifetime together, again and again, each will “die” to their own desires and their own will for the sake of the other. Failure to make that sacrifice will destroy the relationship; divorce courts are full of proof sources for the stubbornness of couples unwilling to sacrifice “me” for “us.”
It’s not hard to get married. Staying married is really hard work. The irony of marriage is that the most important and difficult trial a man and a woman will ever face is one about which they know so little. A couple often doesn’t get too deep into a marriage before the enthusiastic “I do” becomes “What did I do?” There is no way for life to prepare us for the experience of our own marriage.
Marriage brings together two totally different individuals with their own set of idiosyncrasies, traits, habits and backgrounds accumulated over a lifetime. Marriage then demands those individuals give up the lives to which they were accustomed as singles, cast aside “self” and submit to “us.”
You can’t see it. You can’t touch it. “Us” is invisible, but it is real. It is not a sacrifice of our individuality, but the willingness to give a part of who we are for the benefit of the marriage. By subjugating ourselves to the sacrifice of “self” and embracing the humility of that sacrifice for “us,” we truly gain the peace of who we are as an individual.
The intense feelings of love will ebb and flow in a marriage, but a deep and abiding love of “us” is an unshakeable girder for a strong marriage.
Matthew 19:4-6 (NIV) “Haven’t you read,” [Jesus] replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”