To my dear friends:
My husband, Lee, and I just celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary. It is not that unusual for a couple to stay together for this long. We know many couples that have been together far longer. We married late, I in my 30's and Lee in his 40's. We were both independent people and very career oriented, neither looking to "nest" and make a house a home. Lee was in love with me in the eros (romantic) sense of the word and I was in love with him in the phileo (friendship) sense of the word. Alas, this is not enough to make a truly successful marriage. I often envision the thoughts of Reverend Lee Truman as he performed our marriage ceremony in the middle of the desert at 2am. I doubt he would have bet more than a tank of gas on the entire marriage making it two years.
What is it that makes a good marriage, excellent relationship, or deep religious experience? I think these three go together because they have the same root needs, but are simply played out on different stages. The root of all these is love coupled with truth. This is the embodiment of Christ. Christ confused many people. In Him, humanity saw what it was like to truly love and understand at the same time. Jesus was able to completely understand man, and yet have unconditional love for us at the same time. A love that sent Him to the cross for the sins He never committed. In our English language, love is a single word used to describe many emotions. We each use the word to mean what we feel, but it is often interpreted by the other by what they feel.
The Greek language of the Bible used several words for love. Our lack of a clear definition of the kind of love we have makes for much confusion in relationships, marriage, and our spirituality. Christ loved us with agape love, an unconditional, all encompassing, selfless love. When we show love to a friend it is phileo love in that it is a friendship, which may be selfless, but is rarely unconditional and never all encompassing. A marriage must include romantic love, which is eros love, but to become successful it will need to also have phileo and finally turn to agape love.
How does a marriage get to that point? I find in my own marriage that it has come through truth. When two people marry, they know very little about one another. Dating, conversations and mutual experiences can only point to some of what each of us is. In the case of Lee and I, we dated for a very short time, most of our conversations were on the phone, and there were few mutual experiences since we came from completely different backgrounds and even eras of history. We are a half generation apart and therefore much of our lives were lived looking at the same events from very different places. It took a long time for each of us to give up the independence of our lives and share ourselves with each other. Phileo and eros love were developing, but agape love was far from our lives.
It is interesting that Lee came closer to agape or unconditional love first. I think that he has always been quick to give his heart away and the move seemed natural even when he did not completely know me. I took much more time and had to have the love of Christ before I was able to love in such a selfless manner. That was many years into our marriage.
Lee and I had been married for eight years when I realized that Christ died on a cross to pay the penalty of my sins. This was the first time that I heard this message in a personal form. I had grown up understanding the sacrifice of Christ for the world, but I did not understand that it was for me. When you encounter such love, there is no other response but to love back. Nevertheless, even that love was a friendship love. There were conditions, negotiations and a very shallow knowledge. However, that love made me hungry to know the Christ that would do such a thing. I started to study with fervor. The more I knew, the more I loved this Christ. I saw the love He had poured out on me. The times He had miraculously intervened in my life and the deep care, He has for each of us. The truth turned my phileo love into agape love. I now understood how to love.
Nevertheless, that did not make it easier to love my husband with that kind of love. I just knew it was possible within me. I needed to change in so many ways. I first needed to study my husband as I had studied Christ. There were no books about him so I had to listen, digest, and interact with him. I learned to trust him with the thoughts and ideas that were in my head, something I had never done. In several years, probably around fifteen, we were approaching the kind of love Christ meant marriage to be.
Lee became a Christian and began to understand the love of Christ also. This enhanced our relationship and I would have said that we had a very good marriage. Sometime later, I got cancer. The phrase, "for better or worse" was beginning to surface. God had given us the groundwork and now He began to cement an unbreakable relationship.
In the four years, that we have lived with this cancer it has always been our disease. The physical effects are in my body, but everything else is in both of us. We hurt together. Lee goes through as much, if not more, emotional turmoil in times of crises then I do. We both live through each treatment, every scan, every surgery, and every turn of events. We have lain in bed many nights and just talked about our lives, our beliefs, and desires for the future. We have cried over the potential loss and praised God for the gains this cancer has brought about. There is nothing hidden from each other.
This is marriage; truth combined with unconditional love. It is an image of what Christ is. He instituted marriage to show us the relationship He has with us and to model the relationship of the church to Christ. Lee and I never tire of talking about our lives before we met, or what we are thinking right now. We never tire of learning about Christ and how we are to live for Him. It is an act of worship.
As I am able, I go out and visit with people who have been active in the church to some extent, but are no longer involved. As I listen to their stories, I am saddened by the loss that they don't even know they have. They never really knew Christ. They caught the vision. They saw the sacrifice of Christ but they didn't understand the mutuality of that relationship. He knows them so well and yet He loves them despite their flaws, unconditionally. They know very little about Him and have lost interest. A deep abiding love relationship that will carry them through everything has been lost because they didn't pursue it. Many times, it is not all their fault. No one helped them see how they could pursue the relationship. Other times, it was too hard or got in the way of the life they were living.
I shudder to think of how I could have dealt with this cancer if the relationship between Christ and me had not been mature. I know that had I not had a solid relationship with Lee, I would have been extremely despondent. Both these relationships have been a gift and have been strengthened through dealing with cancer. Without these two relationships, the cancer would have quickly taken me to an emotional place that would have never let me survive. The two relationships intertwine and create a triangle that cannot be broken, even by cancer. I am so grateful for the gift of love. God has shown Lee and me something very precious; we have lived it and will continue.
I know that many of you pray for my health. I thank you so much for that. The chemotherapy I am taking now seems to be working on my tumors at a maintenance level to keep me from greater health issues. My life is fairly normal. Continue to pray that this drug does not become too toxic and that God will extend my life to whatever limits He sees fit. Praise God for the life that Lee and I have together, it is exceptional and could only come from God. I often pray for you and know that you are praying for us. It all helps.
All my love
Marj.
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