book review: Mystery of Marriage
not really a review but just sharing this book I am reading that is really good
The two shall become one flesh. This is a great mystery (Ephesians 5:31-32).
I have been nibbling away at this book called "The Mystery of Marriage" and am convinced it will be one of the most valuable books I ever read. It is a contemplation at what marriage is, what marriage does, the difficulties and the glories of a life shared with one person side by side. The description is "meditations on the miracle" inspired from the scripture "the two shall become one flesh. This is a great mystery" (Ephesians 5:31-32). He discusses how and why people can gather enough courage to venture into something so all consuming, something so decisive, something that is designed to be never ending. He talks about the deep changes that are inevitable to come in a partnership as close as marriage, and how it is an all-consuming fire of refinement of your pride, selfishness, ego and even a letting go of things you have always felt entitled to, such as your privacy and independence. He describes marriage as the pinnacle of human relationships but is clear that our relationship as the bride of Christ is of first importance above all else, nevertheless the core of even that relationship is akin to a husband and a wife, revealing the depth and beauty that God ascribes to marriage. His writing is so beautiful and poetic, and there are so many lines and passages that deserve direct quotation, and I would love to present those to you! I also highly recommend getting the book, because no matter where you are in your life, understanding the value and purpose of marriage will be an encouragement for you. I am going to give it to my friends who are getting married and hope it spreads like wildfire, to celebrate the beauty and mystery of this committed love. You are surrounded by these partnerships, were hopefully brought forth out of one, and likely will be bound to one personally as well.
This book is the opposite of taking for granted marriage, but instead exalts it as truly divine and extremely complicated yet profoundly simple as well.
As I am reading descriptions of this book on Amazon, many have said that it is the best book on marriage they have ever read, even after reading a lot of books on the subject material. A lot of people insist, like I would (already, after chapter 1), that it is a book worth having a few copies of on hand to give away to people in your life. Many are also saying that is not just encouraging for someone married, but anyone can appreciate the heartfelt reflections on the difficulties and goodness of love and human relationships. I am humbled that I stumbled upon this book at a Goodwill, and had the curiosity to pick out such a brilliant book that I am sure will impact not just my own life but those who I share it with. I am glad that the Lord gave me such a precious gift at a great time in my life to reflect on relationships and commitments.
One review that I think sums it up really well:
"The only book on marriage you will ever need to read. We actually read this book every year starting on our wedding anniversary and then every morning together before the children wake. It is in a meditation format; one thought a day for seven different sections of the book. It's delightful, funny and deep and sometimes heady. I cry every time I read it. We have started giving it for a wedding gift to every couple who invites us to their wedding. You will not be sorry you bought this one."
He doesn't shy away from the major difficulties and inconveniences that marriage inevitably will present to a couple, but is definitely a believer and an optimist at the worthiness of all the struggle for the glory of what is produced through it. It isn't written as a self-help style book, or even a hand guide, but a loving meditation on what marriage is all about, the good, the bad, and the in-between. It is so direct and straightforward and true that I think it needs to be read very slowly.
Now for some direct quotes! I hope I don't spoil it too much with so much quotation, but I am bored at work and writing all of these out of the book for fun. And I hope that you buy and read the book, but if you don't, I want to share its goodness! A lot of these are short and sweet sentences that I just liked. I will include more from the first chapter in another blog post, but I think there is enough here to take in. 🙂
From the forward and preface:
"And readers, please excuse my own slight giddiness; Mike's pages have just made me aware again that I too am a man in love."
"For friends, when all is said and done, is what a writer wants."
"Many times, I have told Karen that she is the best wife in the world, and I really believe it. Also, that she is the most beautiful and wonderful of all women, and I believe that too. She is like Eve to me, the only woman on earth. Of course she is a sinner as I am, but when we choose to look past this in each other, we enter the paradise of love."
"For the wisest of all people is the one in love, right?"
"We will find that marriage is a perfect metaphor for the love of God, and that the same is true of parenting, friendship, the church, nature, or anything else we find in life. This is the way that God planned it, that everything in life should perfectly reflect his love, so that his glory covers the earth. Everything we experience is a door to paradise."
From the prologue:
"For a person is the single most limitless entity in creation, and if there is anything more unlimited and unrestrained in its possibilities than is a person, it is two people together."
"So, I was alarmed. From the moment I met my wife, I sensed that a process of interior disintegration was beginning to work in me, systemically, insidiously. In other ways, of course, I was being rejuvenated, tremendously built up. But a thirty-year-old man is like a densely built city: nothing new can be built, in its heart, without something else being torn down. So, I began to be demolished. There were many times when I felt quite seriously that everything my life had stood for was being challenged, or that somehow, I had been tricked into selling my very soul for the sake of a woman's love! So, there was a lot at stake as the wedding day approached: In fact, there was everything at stake. Never before had I felt that so much was riding upon one single decision. Later, I would discover, very gradually, that that is one of the chief characteristics of love: It asks for everything. Not just for a little bit or a whole lot, but for everything. And unless one is challenged to give everything, one is not really in love.
"The wedding is merely the beginning of a lifelong process of handing over absolutely everything, and not simply everything that one owns, but everything that one is. There is no one who is not broken by this process. It is excruciating and inexorable, and no one can stand up to it."
"For in marriage the breaking that is done is done by the very heel of love itself."
"Matrimony, then, through this devastating strategy of watching, launches a fierce and unrelenting attack upon the fortress of the ego, upon that place in a person that craves privacy, independence, self-sufficiency and lack of interference. "
"And yet, being watched by one who loves is not like anything else on earth! No, to be loved as one being watched is like one thing only: It is like the watchfulness of the Lord God himself, the sense that the believer has out of living his life in the invisible presence of the living God, and of being so loved that it is as if an aura or halo had already been conferred upon him, a spiritual electricity that surrounds and fills all of his words and actions, for suddenly all that he is and does is not only accepted and respected, but marveled at. More than just being appreciated, he is treated as being awesome, beautiful. He is cherished."
"A person, to grow keen and shining and real, needs love, which is to say, needs another person: "As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another" (Proverbs 27:17) And sharpening is a painful process: Extract the pain from love, and there is nothing left."
There is so much treasure to discover in this book and I can’t wait to share more with you again soon. <3
Some personal thoughts:
Is there anything more holy than the love that is shared exclusively between two people? Is there anything more powerful than two people’s commitments to one another, to being there and to helping this person as you would your own flesh? Is there anything more mysterious than the fact that we grow our families through choice, that we in essence create our blood ties? This is scandalous love: exclusive, private, set apart love. A love that is realized again and again through our choice, the deepest desires of our hearts. How fragile can our ability to choose be, how often are we tempted to make small choices, selfish choices, convenient choices rather than to choose selflessness, to choose another, to choose death to our own interest for the sake of someone else. But it is in this choosing of another person, allowing death to our ego, where we find a great life force brimming right before us. Something I loved that the author said is that everything in life points us back to God, to something and someone so ineffable, who is truly perfect, holy, beautiful, and all together good. It is wonderful to remember that at the core of God’s holiness is his infinite and eternal goodness, that everything he is, everything he does, everything he has made, is because he is goodness itself. Inherently, we can’t deny ourselves from what is good, there is of course some subjectivity in what is good to one person or the next, but on a more visceral level, we all know what goodness feels like. It feels like connection, forgiveness, love, playfulness, appreciation. It feels like a hug, a kiss on the cheek, a glass of cool water, a nourishing meal, a warm bed. God has ordained so much goodness for us to delight in, to uncover, to discover, to taste and to see. Every revelation of goodness opens our hearts to more, we soften, we see more clearly, we are made better because of it. I can imagine our appreciation of goodness like an ever slippery steep downward hill, where it may take us some time to get to the exciting parts of the hill where we are almost always having fun, but that once we get to that place in our appreciation of goodness, or God, we can continue to go faster and faster into more discoveries of goodness and grace. Maybe we can get to a place where God’s goodness is more like an elevator right into a ball pit that we fall into several times a day, to our delight and surprise again and again. Once we see, experience, and feel the goodness that is around us, when we see it in the very fabric of all of human life, I don’t believe that we can soon forget that. I hope not.