Married by America

right now “married by america” is on in the background–yeah, the show where people agree to marry the person who gets the most telephone votes during primetime. i heard a quote from one of the women’s mothers that just didn’t sound right to me: “Well, I trust America–they’ve never made a wrong decision before”. that’s right . . .

no matter how you feel about our current political quagmire, i think it’s pretty safe to say that our nation has made mistakes in the past. but as disturbing as that is, my main objection to the show is not the method of choice, but rather the premise. it seems to perpetuate the idea that marriage is an end goal rather than a journey. i’ve certainly felt this way in the past, but recently i’ve been exposed to a couple of things that make me believe the opposite.

first, a mentor of mine, Larry Moody, advised me to “just get married–the rest works itself out”. his opinion, based in over 10 years of happy marriage, is that the thing keeping good couples together is the fact that they have gone through tough times together. that builds trust, it builds security, and it BUILDS love–rather than needing all those things at the beginning to work. Larry’s quotable moment: “you can’t wait until you have everything in place before bringing someone in to share it, because then it’s still just YOUR life–not a shared one.”

second, i was privileged to participate in the recording of a cover version of “the good stuff” by kenny chesney. check out some lyrics from the song:

And it’s the way that she looks with the rice in her hair

Eating burnt supper the whole first year

And asking for seconds to keep her from tearing up

Yeah man that’s the good stuff

it just made me long for a situation where i can receive by giving–whether that is emotional support, material needs, or good ol’ fashioned love–and actually build a relationship that didn’t and couldn’t exist before.

that’s the good stuff.