Ruth Institute Blog ? To my student upon grading her Christian ...

This was written by a good friend of mine on her blog, A Heroic Moment.? I found this entry inspirational, moving, brilliant, and deserving of a wider readership. Enjoy!

Unless you?re a teacher, you just have no idea.

No idea how much it takes out of you. How many times you will be awake, alone in the family room, still grading papers, and you will read something written by a student?a student you love and pray for?that will quite simply break your heart.

Something like this:? ?Marriage is nothing more than a tether for insecure? people to prove their relationship is real and feel validated.?

The question she was answering: What is the substance and purpose of marriage?

The back of the exam did not have enough space for me to respond as I wanted to. So I wrote her the following letter. She has since graduated, gone to college, and at least according to Facebook, is ?in a relationship.?

I have never had any indication that anything I said to her changed her mind. But truth is truth, and there is never a time when truth is not worth hearing again.

Dear Smart, Witty, Gifted Girl:

I regret that you think marriage is merely a validation for insecure people. Marriage is not just yet another variation of forcing a commitment, or as you said, a tether. It is impossible to present a thorough definition of marriage without first defining the human person: what she is, what she is made for, how she operates. Marriage springs directly from anthropology, and without an adequate anthropology, marriage will perhaps never be more than just another way people stay together.

Yet consider that ALL relationships require validation in the first place.? What legitimately happy and healthy couple on the planet does not need validation? Saying ?I love you? is validation. So is giving ?just because? flowers,? or taking out the trash, or going to work to support the family, or making any sacrifice. No relationship would function without validation, i.e., the actions and words that are the evidence of love.

Consider the damage that occurs when people feel unvalidated in their relationships and families. Validation is not a negative thing unless you don?t believe it?s sincere, in which case it becomes merely manipulation.

Obviously this validation begins before marriage; I did not live in constant doubt of my husband?s love for me until at last we said our vows. In fact, it was all his premarital validation of love that inspired the desire and confidence to make a lifelong commitment. I didn?t get married because I needed proof that he was committed to me. I got married because I already knew he was.

Marriage should and must occur only when two people are already secure in their relationship and love. To do otherwise is to flip marriage into reverse, and ultimately to destroy it from the inside out.

You argue that sure, that?s fine if that?s how you roll; but what difference does it make if you are both secure and confident and love each other and don?t ?need? marriage?? It seems you are essentially saying that nothing really changes in a good relationship by getting married. You loved each other before; you still do. You were committed before; you still are.

But then you brought up divorce. You said if you?re not married, you don?t have to deal with the ?hassle? of divorce. I know your parents are divorced, that your dad used to leave you for days and weeks when you were a little girl. You told me that yourself one day, and I remember the thick pain in your voice.

Not getting married because you fear divorce is bogus. Marriage and divorce are not a cause-effect relationship. People don?t break up because they got married. People break up when something in the relationship breaks, married or not.

You are no ?safer? from the pain of a failed relationship if you are unmarried than if you are, unless your relationship is not a genuine self-investment in the first place. The only way to keep a failed relationship from costing you is to not invest very much in it from the beginning.

Less risk is achieved by less investment. Just the same way, you could also fail to invest yourself in a marriage, and when it falls apart, it will not cost you as much pain because it did not mean as much to you in the first place.

My point was this: that many people avoid marriage when what they are really trying to avoid is pain and failure. Somehow they conclude that if they are not married, and the relationship fails, it won?t be as painful. They seem to think that marriage would take a perfectly good relationship and deform it somehow.

All bogus, and not only bogus, but reflective of a mentality that prioritizes self-preservation instead of self-gift.

There are only two ways I can avoid the pain of a failed relationship:

1) One way is by not investing myself?not by not getting married. In this case, it is the lack of self-investment, not the lack of marriage vows, that makes the loss less painful.

2) The only other way I can avoid the pain of a failed relationship is to share a total gift of myself, a full investment, with someone who has done the same for me.

It seems plausible that those who reject marriage to avoid the risk of divorce will behave just the same in any relationship. How does the lack of marital commitment make you more free, except to walk away?

So many of your choices of phrases and words struck me as illustrative of a view of marriage that is far from the truth and the design established by God and preserved by the Church.? When marriage is merely a legal condition, people mistake marriage for commitment.? But in the true understanding of marriage, commitment is prerequisite to marriage, and that commitment must remain steadfast in order for marriage to endure.

Furthermore, marriage is more than external validation for the couple; that a couple marries is a validation of love for everyone who witnesses them.

That is to say that when we see a couple marry with the mutual commitment to be faithful and self-giving even through trial, this gives us hope. We know it is possible to be loved even beyond what is presently known about you and your life; spouses vow to love each other through the unforeseen or as yet unknown trials, no matter what.

Smart, Witty, Talented Girl, I love you so very much. I want all good things for you. I want you to see the future with hope instead of caution. I want you to know how to love?and how to be loved. I want you to know the real thing when you see it.

But most of all, I want you to be free. From fear, from dread, from past suffering, from past mistakes, from a closed heart.

I will be praying for you,

Mrs. M

Source: http://www.ruthblog.org/2012/10/27/to-my-student-upon-grading-her-christian-marriage-exam/

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