Honeymoon

If only I could go back to my honeymoon…

In such a statement, some would undoubtedly hear good relationships and well-planned relational times with the one you love best.

Others, like me, would hear fanciful infatuation that loves the imagined more than reality. The honeymoon is often held up to be the epitome of human experience and is used to describe times of highest joys in human relationships and endeavors. Merriam-Webster’s defines it as “a period of unusual harmony especially following the establishment of a new relationship.” The new marriage relationship deserves special recognition and definitely contains a sense of unusual harmony, but to say that the honeymoon is the epitome of that relationship and to desire to return to it carries some troubling implications.

In Anabaptist culture, we value marriage highly. Men who usually seem more concerned with getting than with giving present expensive gifts to newly married couples. The amount of gift cards and cash, not to mention all the practical household gifts and shop and garden tools that help a young couple get started, leaves small question as to the value the givers place on marriage and the Christian home.

The time and energy devoted to planning the wedding should be balanced by the time and energy put into planning for a life together. A couple may go deeply into debt to have the perfect wedding, complete with private attendants and beautiful bouquets, finally to be swept off to Antigua and Barbuda for a five-star stay at the beach for two weeks. Plenty of images posted to Facebook and WhatsApp strengthen the idea that the honeymoon is the pinnacle of human experience. This couple then fades from the spotlight, and two years later, they part ways, the disagreements greater than their foundering commitment. Or they may bicker and struggle for years, not understanding the foundation they were created to stand upon.

What carries a relationship deeper into understanding and maturity? Is it the whirlwind of a wedding and honeymoon? Or could it be something more? I propose that this thing that enables a couple to grow closer and more deeply in love as time progresses is not the honeymoon. Then what is it?

Is Jesus the catalyst they need? Some people have described the necessary component of a healthy, growing marriage as the person of Jesus Christ. In a Christian marriage, the presence of the Holy Spirit is a given. We acknowledge Him and understand that He empowers us to live out the necessary virtues of faithfulness and forgiveness and all those characteristics that make a person sweet and inviting.

But we are still human. Our responses are selfish if we do not analyze our motives and change what we find lacking. The first year of marriage requires much giving. Miscommunications that arise from misunderstanding personal and family values complicate life. But as we grow in understanding with our spouse, we begin to see what they actually mean when they do or say something that may have seemed uncaring before. We can give space for our spouse to wrestle with the feelings of anger and disappointment, space to cry or sleep instead of giving into the urge to fix the problem.

Rewarding relationships are involving and take years to develop. Young-married couples must take things as they come. If this is what they want, they must make decisions along the way that will lead to that iconic relationship where an old man and an old woman don’t even think of drinking their morning coffee without the other and never have an evil thought toward one another anymore.

In my early love as I pursued my wife, I was deeply interested in how to do this right. What I found was that the Western world tends to look at the initial attraction as paramount while the Eastern mentality puts more value on the love that grows out of the commitment. In my search, I found a Jewish author who said, “You Westerners put hot soup in a cold plate, and it slowly cools off; while we Easterners put warm soup in a hot plate, and it slowly warms up.” While I am not a proponent of arranged marriages, I am a proponent of making conscious, committed decisions that continue to “heat up” the marriage as time goes on.

I feel sorry for couples who are just getting married. They have so many things to learn before their marriage warms up and begins to give back the richness that mature relationships effuse. Then, I think back to the blessings that were mine at the time and realize they are enjoying themselves fully in their current condition, and that is as it ought to be.

“If I could only go back to my honeymoon” only serves to show others that I don’t experience the fullness of marriage now. In every stage of marriage when we are walking in the path of light, there is a rich fullness that comes from being totally committed; whether we are on our honeymoon, in the throes of raising young children, or enjoying the sweetness of a mature relationship, the presence of Christ helps us be committed, developing a depth of relationship beyond what meets the eye.