A Successful Marriage

It is my understanding that the #loveyourspousechallenge is a way to affirm and encourage marriages. Is that correct? If so, I love the intentions! My friend's marital success is a part of my joy, as we are all connected and belong to one another.

However, something is missing from this "challenge". Although affirming your spouse and celebrating marriage is wonderful, simply being in the marital state does not equal successful marriage. Or, a happy marriage.

In the spirit of wanting my friends to be married well, I will pass along the advice that helped me to be a better human. Once, while discouraged that I wasn't married, a wise friend said, "Go and throw yourself into the service of others." This is what I learned : to be single well is to serve your neighbor and consider their needs as important as your own. As soon as you get the focus off of yourself, happiness follows. Not only is this the best advice for the happy, single life - it applies to all!

The #loveyourspousechallenge isn't an investment into marriage as it can't possibly have the long lasting results a marriage truly needs. If it's true, that to be filled with joy is to lead a life of serving others, then the same applies to a marriage, where two have become ONE. (What does this mean? It means that it is impossible to focus on your marriage and also not simultaneously focus on a part of yourself.) I’m not saying focusing on marriage is the problem. I am saying that marriage is NOT the end of shared love.

It's a beginning.

So what’s missing? What follows celebrating marriage? What is missing is this : a conversation of what follows AFTER focusing on one's marriage.

Those whose marriage is at its best GO, with their spouse, and throw their lives into the service of others - TOGETHER. Marriage is at its best when it lovingly unites to take the focus off of itself to pour out love, IN UNITY, into the community. (Reminds me of the Trinity! And, yes, I do believe that children are a built in receiver of the overflow of love in a marriage. The love extends outside of the marriage onto a child. And, that love is not limited to children! Love pours out of family to orphans, widows, the lonely and discouraged.)

The point is, to find complete fulfillment and joy from marriage is impossible. Complete fulfillment comes from outside ourselves, from God. Once filled with God's love, we live to serve our neighbor, those that may have nothing to offer us in return. These intentions are incredibly different than the motive one might have moving into a friendship with the like-minded or towards those we marry.

To love those who are not loved, those who have nothing to offer us in return, to give to the impoverished, to love your enemy - this is to be the salt and light of the world! This is what it looks like to be married well or single well. This is to be #blessed.

Perfect joy comes from serving others and expecting nothing in return. Go and love. 

- Jordan, NYC

Where is the other half of America?

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/27/us/supreme-court-same-sex-marriage.html?_r=0

A Supreme Court decision on Friday marks a major shift in our nation's values and political system. Amidst the widespread celebration of millions of people around the world, I want to point out a subtler issue of unequal status and economic injustice.

To me, this decision is not a commentary about the status of the homosexual community, but evidence of the value we place on marital status. For centuries, our society has privileged marriage over singleness -- with leadership, tax breaks, and cultural importance. Despite all the progress we've made with civil rights issues, looks like we're clinging to the idea that marriage equals legitimacy, even in 2015.

While our society may not value everyone equally irregardless of their relationship status, God does. He sent his Son to liberate the world from these layers of value, ones which we cling to so tightly or criticize until we're welcomed in.

Well, singles community, I'm here to tell you that you are valued. Whether you are straight, gay, widowed or divorced. You are not alone in the loneliness, the economic disadvantages or the prejudice under which you live day to day. The God of All sees you and esteems you on the same level of those who are married.

- AMY, NYC

In serious need of something more

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/06/26/singleminded/?rref=opinion

I don't know about having been taught to fear being alone.  If anything, I've always feared being dependent on someone. But either way, isn't that just the flip side of the coin?  Much like neither thinking too much of yourself or too little of yourself is true humility, neither is the fear of being alone or too dependent good for you.  In either case, fear is about control, or the lack-thereof.  And this writer definitely experiences both.  She straddles between the lines of either being completely afraid of being alone, or being entirely empowered by the high of being alone and "free."   Her fear for both singleness and monogamy strangles her and fuels her need for drugs.  Ultimately, she seems only "single-minded" for fear.   I think that in the issue of singleness - in everything, really - it all boils down to one word: fear.  But Love drives out that fear, right?  

I was reminded of a C.S. Lewis quote when I read the article: "To love at all is to be vulnerable.  Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken.  If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal.  Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements.  Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.  But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change.  It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.  To love is to be vulnerable."  But vulnerability is only freeing if it's seeped in the greatest vulnerability the world has ever seen - on the cross.  Until she, until we, see the freedom that resulted from Christ's self-inflicted vulnerability in his death for us, we will never be truly free - single, or not. 

Joyce, L. A.

Finally, Love for all...except you.

At risk of leading off on too strong of an offensive foot, I am gay, I live in New York City, and I am a professing Christian. This cacophony of circumstances colour my life in the best, and worst of ways- especially this past week. Yes, this is yet another article discussing the Supreme Court decision to legalise gay marriage, effectively creating long awaited “equality”. Bombarded with texts of victory and joy over the decision, friends who knew of my struggle eagerly awaited my response, expecting that I would somehow be overjoyed at the sight of victory for struggling homosexuals. They wanted a flagpole or some sort of leader of Christians in support of the decision, as if I were a bridge to connect the two worlds in harmony. What they weren't expecting is my actual response. 

Dismay. 

Dismay and sadness. Dismay at the fact that yet again, I feel more marginalised and ostracised than ever before. Sadness at the fact that in the wake of what is seen to be the greatest triumph of civil rights since the 60’s, we still managed to ignore the largest group of people in the United States. There is a delusion that this new civil rights awakening came without violence but with love and endurance and acceptance. I have no eloquent words here, or politically correct term to say how bad this is. 

Just read the statements laid out by Justice Anthony Kennedy. 

“Marriage,” Anthony Kennedy writes, “responds to the universal fear that a lonely person might call out only to find no one there.” He goes on to say, “No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice and family.”

At face value, these encouraging words can lift even the heaviest of battled hearts to joy. Resounding like trumpets from the helm of justice, these words will ring through the earth! Rejoice! The inherent problem here with such a floral statement is that it denies the largest demographic of people in the US, or at least NYC…singles. 

According to the Supreme Court, I cannot embody ideals of love or fidelity or devotion. I am not sacrificial in my love and I have no family. According to their definition of the altar that is marriage, I am selfish and have no idea what it means to serve or be loved a part of a family. Never mind that I have a beautiful community of friends that deeply love me and care for me and call me. Never mind the years of sacrifice and work poured out in working with refugees. Forget the fact that I am devoted deeply to my friends and family and my faith. 

Never mind how I decided, of my own accord, to be so in love with Christ and his law and love and mercy, that I saw my desire to be with another man secondary to that. It’s half-hearted offensive ideologies like people’s current view of marriage both in the church and on a secular level leave singles to feel like lepers. People who need to be healed. 

So what did we win? Has love become synonymous with status? 

Yet no one parades in my honour. I have no designated colours or benefits. What do I get for my decision to stay single? Higher taxes. I lose not only a massive support from confused brothers and sisters in my faith, but also from my own government. 

Doesn’t seem very equal to me.

-Anonymous