theencouragingword

Blog 40 – 6.1.15

The June Bride

A dear friend is getting married this Saturday and I would like to wish her and her husband, to be, all the best. Having said that, I was once married to a June bride. She was my second I was her first. I was married two more times and she several more times than that. Why do marriages fail?

I do not claim to be an expert on marriage but I have had some limited experience. And to my credit as a salesman, a poet, and a lover I was able to convince four beautiful ladies to marry me. Of those four often rocky and also wonderful relationships came a creative and delightful daughter and a handsome and intelligent son. Two marriages produced no children but I loved all four ladies, still do, and always will. But why did those marriages fail?

If I am honest, I must admit the fault was not in our stars but mostly if not entirely mine. You see most of my life I believed a lie. I believed that I was incomplete without someone to love me. It is a subtle lie that has been around for a long time. The truth is only a whole person has anything to really share with another person other than his or her need. No one finds a needy person attractive unless they have bought into what I call the Savior or “I can fix him or her” complex.

People don’t need fixing they we just need to be loved for who we are, the way we are. And if you don’t or can’t love someone just as they are you should do yourself and them a favor and walk on by.

In my mind there is only one reason two people should marry and that is because they cannot imagine a life apart. Sounds kind of sad doesn’t it, the best reason for marrying being a lack of imagination. Probably the ladies do not see the humor in that but the romantics usually don’t. Happy endings do not always follow happy beginnings especially when those beginnings have their basis in a lie.

Each of us, I think are whole people. Two halves do not in this case equal a whole, only two halves or incomplete persons. Looking for something or someone outside or selves to complete us is I think a fools errand. And one, like many, I was on most of my life.

If you want to be with someone by all means be with them but if you think you need them to complete you, you are going to be disappointed. They can’t and will end up resenting you for expecting them to or for wanting to change them into a white knight or delivering angel.

Where is the encouraging word in all this? Right here! You never needed a white knight or rescuing angel for that is who you are for yourself and yeah maybe for others on occasion but not as a full time job. People who lean too heavy on others for long periods of time allow their own spiritual legs and wings to grow weak. All this is in your mind. Truth is we are all magnificent beings awakening to our highest potential.

Oh, and when you get a glimpse of such a one. It is like hearing wedding bells in your heart. King David had five hundred wives and seven hundred concubines (that was the B team). He must have heard lots of wedding bells. I wonder how many of those were June brides.

Your Fellow Traveler,
David White