“Life is Difficult” — One-upped by Marriage Alone
Just over 40 years ago those three words life is difficult served as the first sentence of a book that became not only a New York Times bestseller 13 years running, but it also became, at the time, the number one nonfiction bestseller in history! And those three words may have been responsible, because millions remember the book only by its most quoted line, Life is Difficult. Dr. M. Scott Peck, a psychiatrist, was largely unknown until he penned that line in the book that made him famous, The Road Less Traveled. That one-liner is famous because it is absolutely, indisputably, and without doubt true, and everybody knows it is. Yet still, there’s such a thing, inconceivable but also true, as that one-liner on steroids. It’s called marriage.
In Perspective — A Portrait of Marriage
The church in which I recently served before retiring owned a golf course — the only such church in the world and with that golf course on its campus. The 18 holes were nestled among the Ko’olau Mountains of Honolulu. It was a beautiful course but no golf course anywhere had the hazards this one had. It was known by some as the “Toughest in the Nation.” For years that fact was stitched onto the fabric of Ko‘olau logo wear. The Wall Street Journal gave it the name toughest in the WORLD. And it’s well known that the eighteenth hole, the signature hole, was the toughest on the course. So it was not totally out of line to make the claim that Ko‘olau’s eighteenth hole was the toughest golf hole in the world. Marriage is to life as Ko‘olau’s eighteenth hole was to the Ko‘olau Golf Course — the most difficult of the already difficult.
The Experts Agree
Noted British pastor and counselor, Dr. Leslie Weatherhead, was approached one evening by a couple who came to him for advice. “Oh, us! We’ve never had an argument!” That caused Weatherhead to say to himself either these people are lying or else one of them has crushed the other. And though The Road Less Traveled is not about marriage, Dr. Scott Peck did write another best seller, The Different Drum, that relates to marriage. In it he identifies several stages of progress with the last stage being harmony and solidarity which he calls true community (as opposed to pseudo or false community). But that state of unanimity cannot be reached without first going through what Peck calls the “state of chaos.” Yes, life is difficult and marriage tops it all. Observing from 30,000 feet — or let’s say 30,000 light years — it doesn’t make sense.
After Hearing Lyrics from our Most Popular Romantic Love Songs…
An alien from another planet would be baffled by our one-out-of-every-two divorce rate. Here are some of those lyrics: # Cause all of me loves all of you — # I keep you with me in my heart — # No matter what I do I’m no good without you — # I’m here to stay — # I put into words how wonderful life is now that you are in it — # I’m feeling frightened you’ll slip away — # Even if romance ran out of rhyme you would still have my heart until the end of time — # At last my love has come… and life is like a song — # I want you here with me from tonight until the end of time — # If you fall I will catch you — # Your love is better than ice cream. (Quoted from the Best Romantic Love Songs sung by John Legend, Rihanna, Mariah Carey, Elton John, Madonna, Chicago, Cyndi Lauper, etc.). Where’s the disconnect? What’s up with that knot when it’s tied?
“A Bumble Bee Can’t Fly!”
So concluded French entomologist August Magnan who noted “the insect’s flight is actually impossible.”
Marriage is in the Bumble Bee bracket. It shouldn’t work. For the Bee; its wings can’t support it; its body is too heavy and stubby; it possesses “physics-defying aerodynamics.” For marriage: it’s the wedding of two opposite personalities; two opposing genders; topped by two very different approaches to that vital glue that makes two into one — a oneness touching soul, body, and spirit and fulfilling the innate desire to procreate.
No, it shouldn’t work! For Bee and marriage, it takes attention to the wisdom of the Inventor for success.
Obviously, Much, Much, Much More Remains to Be Said (Thus Door to a Lasting Marriage)
But the foundation of it all can’t be said better than my literary friend Frederick Buechner says it: Go hang logic and arithmetic. To give yourself away in love to somebody else — as a man and woman do at a wedding — is to become for the first time yourself fully. Nobody with any sense claims marriage is going to be clear sailing. “For better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health” — There will be times when the vows exchanged seem all but impossible to keep. But by holding fast to each other in trust, in patience, in hope, and by holding fast also to Him who has promised to be present where two [or more] are gathered together in His name as He was present that day in Cana of Galilee (John 2), the impossible becomes possible. The water becomes wine. And by grace we become, little by little, truly loving at last.