"This day I put to death all other options." These are the words I spoke to her when I made my marriage vows. It was the cost of our exchange. Though I think I understand it better now, still, in spite of time and seasoning, in spite of all folly, madness, and years of exposure, in spite of the dark and weathered face of all those things which are the stonework and frame of commitment, I would do it all again. And to her alone would I pledge this one life.

Before I continue I must say that I had a completely different presentation written out. Generally the same information, but in reading it over, it was too angry, too bitter. It was about our failure at covenant ('our' being the body of Christian believers and the world we have made and that otherworld that exists just outside our borders). So, I have rewritten this in another tongue. One that is sweeter. One that is more familiar to me, a bit closer to home. One that I have found to be easier to write. It almost sings.

On August 5 [1999], Benita and I celebrated 15 years of married life. I could not have imagined then what I know now to be true about marriage. It is a holy thing. It is a thing that is worth the fight. The fight that it sometimes takes with the great legions of our flesh, with all the dark enchantments and allurements of the world around us. It is a thing that long after the warm rush of infatuation has drained with the fevers of our youth, it proves itself stronger and founded upon something other than the inconstancy of feeling. It is the thing that all other lesser things are centered upon and revolve around.

Also in August, my parents celebrated their 55th year of married life. In April of this year my brother and his wife celebrated 30 years. Do the math. With our 15, that's 100 years. I have little to boast in this life but this one thing is beautiful. That any one can be dedicated to any thing, much less another living breathing person for 55 years. This is the greatest gift my parents will have left my brother and I when we will occasion to look back upon it and add up all the sums that have been counted. This kind of foundation is laid at a heavy price. But that is the stuff of covenant, the stuff of sweet wedlock.

We are wed to Christ. When we put on Christ we put to death all other options. We are baptized into that death. It is His way. We give up the life we know for a greater life. We give up the love we only imagined for that which is real and everlasting and life giving. No, we don't always get it right. I don't always seem worth the trouble. But to a holy God perhaps I am. And more... to him I am holy. By his sacrifice, in that great exchange, I am made so. I did not look for nor did I find Him. He chose me. He set his seal of ownership upon me. Like a seal upon the heart. A seal upon the arm. I acknowledge my boldness, but for you and I to see ourselves in any other way is mockery and holds Him in contempt. This is, too, the stuff of a good marriage.

Benita had to leave town a few weeks ago to be with her mother in Charleston, West Virginia, who was recovering from surgery. I was alone for four and a half weeks. This type of solitude was different. It wasn't like my being away, my being out of town to sing in another church with all the distractions and the welcomed strangeness of another place. This time she was gone and I was left alone in our house where every room, every shadow, every common and familiar thing began to haunt me. The mornings too silent, I was lost in the absence of a voice that in tender closeness had read to me on endless days before from her beloved devotionals. Such is her practice. Every flower left to water and every flower left to wither in the waterless hazards of my neglect and the emptiness of our bed... all these things began to bring to me an unexpected and unexplainable presence of pain. I missed us.

After the weeks passed, I drove to Charleston to pick her up. As I rounded the corner close to her mother's house I found myself to be genuinely nervous. I almost hit a bus. My hands were shaking. She didn't appear when I first came in. I asked where she was. Shad, our son, told me she was upstairs. I felt like a school kid. My heart was racing. As I turned on the staircase and saw her for the first time I could not hold it in any longer. I wept. I buried my head in her soft shoulder and wept and cleansed my heart of its pain. In that moment love took us outward, beyond ourselves, and into a holy place.

When I recovered, and even to this day, I think, 'This is the way Christ loves us.' And yet, more so, unexplainably so, far beyond my best attempt at words. I am His and He is mine. I can just begin to understand what I am in His eyes when I behold what she is in mine.