Once upon a time I had a marvelous idea: I decided I would invite together all the couples for whom I had performed wedding ceremonies to see how they were doing. I planned a lavish reunion and sent out gilded invitations, inviting them to join me and share their experiences as married couples. I couldn’t wait to hear their stories.
The day arrived and soon the couples began filing into the reception room, all smiling and giggly. There were the husband and wife I married in their teens. “Still together!” I thought. “What a surprise.” Then the couple who scored exactly the opposite on their Prepare/Enrich premarital test came in. “They seem happy enough,” I surmised. After them, the couple I was sure were perfectly matched arrived, holding hands. “They definitely look happy,” I said to myself contentedly.
Soon the room was filled with all kinds of couples, many of whom I hadn’t seen in years. All of them were smiling and laughing and talking about their weddings and how fantastic they were. They kept thanking me for the excellent job I had done officiating. I have to admit, I had to work hard at staying humble. “Oh, thank you. It was nothing,” I kept saying.
After a while, I invited the couples to sit in a large circle of chairs so we could have a time of open sharing.
“So tell me about your marriages. Who wants to be first?” I asked.
The perfectly matched couple both shot up their hands.?
“I just want to say” ,”I just want to say,” they were both talking excitedly at the same time. Finally, the husband nodded to his wife.?
“I just want to say,” she went on, “that the wedding service you did was a fantastic foundation for our marriage. Since our wedding day, we have faithfully met once a week together with others who attended our wedding to celebrate it, just like you taught us.”
“Yes!” the husband jumped in. “We haven’t missed a single week. And we go through the exact same wedding service you did, only with a different pastor. I have to admit, he doesn’t do it as good as you. But he gets the job done.”
“Wow! Your faithfulness to your marriage and to each other is wonderful!” I said. “And I’m sure your new pastor will improve.”
The opposite-in-every-way couple chimed in. “We’ve faithfully met every week and relived our wedding service too,” said the husband, with a glow on his face. Then the wife smiled joyfully and said, “We sing songs about love and marriage. We celebrate our union. We even say our vows again. It’s very emotional. I feel so at one with my husband when we meet together like that. Marriage is so awesome!”
My heart swelled with joy. “Amazing! It’s wonderful to see how great you all are doing. Now tell me about your children.”
With that, everyone’s eyes sank to the floor.
“We…we don’t have any children,” said the husband I did the wedding for in his teens.
“No we don’t,” said his wife sadly.
“Neither do we,” said the perfectly matched couple.
All the other couples shook their heads as well.
“None of you have any children? Hasn’t anyone been doing any training for you at your weekly wedding celebrations on how to have babies?” I asked.
They all nodded sullenly.?
“Yes, we attend those classes. But having babies is so…awkward,” said the wife of the perfectly matched couple. ?Again, the others nodded in agreement.?“It doesn’t seem natural. We’ve been trained on how to share the Four Physical Laws, but it’s, well…icky.”?As she said this, she closed her eyes, grimmaced and shuddered, all at the same time, like she was having a brain freeze from drinking ice water too fast.
My heart sank. “How are we going to promote healthy marriages and families in our culture if even these well-grounded couples find it difficult to reproduce?” I wondered. The sharing time went on for another thirty minutes. After it was over, the couples filed out as I stood at the door. Again, they thanked me for the great job I had done at their weddings. But I could see disappointment in their eyes.
Ever since that reunion, I’ve wondered what could be done differently. Should I start using contemporary music in my wedding services? Is there a better way to explain how to have babies? Do I need to build a nicer sanctuary? I’ve even thought I might encourage the husbands and wives to move closer to each other, maybe even onto the same block, so their marriages would be more convenient. But I’ve decided that would be too radical.
I haven’t landed on a solution yet. But I am reading up on it.
This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.
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