We Married Across It

Nineteen years and nobody has ever said a single hard word, and that is what makes it so hard to talk about.

Both sets of parents came to the wedding. Both sets have been decent, actually decent, not politely decent, for nineteen years. There has never been a scene. There has never been a comment at a table that anybody had to smooth over afterward.

And there is a question living in that kitchen and it has been living there since the second year.

It shows up in the small stuff, always. Which house at which time of year. What the children were taught and by whom. Which of the two of them says the thing before a meal when both families are there, and whether the words used are one family's words or the other's, and the fact that this gets decided every single time by a small look across a room that neither of them has ever mentioned out loud.

He said to her once, in the car, badly, that he sometimes feels like they run a border crossing.

She said: I know.

And then neither of them said anything for about four miles, because there was nowhere for the conversation to go. It was not a problem with a solution in it. Solving it would mean one of them giving something up, and neither of them wants the other to, and both of them have quietly assumed for years that eventually somebody will have to.

You know that four miles.

Maybe you married across it. Maybe your parents did and you grew up on the line. Maybe it is not a marriage at all but a friendship, or a job, or a town, and you have been the joint between two things that do not quite meet for so long that you have stopped noticing you are load bearing.

There is no villain anywhere in this. That is the thing people outside it never understand. Everybody involved is good. That is precisely why it never gets resolved.

What the rule actually says

Here is a sentence that Paul repeats three separate times in one short passage, which is what a man does when he expects to be misunderstood.

But as God hath distributed to every man, as the Lord hath called every one, so let him walk. And so ordain I in all churches.1 Corinthians 7:17

He is writing into the exact situation. People from two backgrounds, in one room, in one movement, with everybody wanting to know who has to become what.

And his ruling is not a compromise and it is not a merger. It is: stay where you are and walk.

He says it about the people from one side, and then he says it about the people from the other side, and then he says it a third time in general terms, and each time the instruction is the same and it is aimed in both directions equally.

You are called where you are, and the passage that speaks straight into your kitchen declines to move anybody. That is what let him walk means, repeated three times so it could not be read as a concession to one side (1 Corinthians 7:17), and it is the Holy Spirit who does the calling in that sentence, which means the question of who has to give something up was answered before either of you was born.

Nothing on this page will decide your Christmas

Now I want to be extremely plain, because a man reading this at his own table deserves plainness.

Nothing here tells you which house at which time of year. Nothing here tells you what to teach your children, which words to use before a meal, whose family to be at on the difficult weekend, or which of the two of you should say the thing when everybody is there.

Those are yours. They are actually yours, both of you, together, and they are not this site's business and they never will be. Anybody who arrives at your kitchen with a ruling has just added a third party to a marriage that was doing fine with two.

You have not been handed a verdict, and no page anywhere gets to sit at your table and decide. The word says let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind (Romans 14:5), and it is the Holy Spirit who does that persuading, in each of you, at whatever pace He works at, which is why the two of you have been left to do this by look and not by rule for nineteen years and have not got it wrong.

The assumption that has been doing the damage

Here is the part worth taking home, and it is not about either family.

You have both been operating on a shared assumption that neither of you has ever said out loud: that this ends with somebody giving something up. That there is a resolution out there somewhere and it has a loser in it, and that you are postponing it kindly.

That assumption is doing more work in your kitchen than either family has ever done.

And the passage does not contain it. There is no eventual settlement in it, no transitional arrangement, no hint that this is a temporary accommodation until somebody comes round. Walk, says the man, three times, and then he moves on to something else entirely.

You are not postponing anything, and there is no reckoning scheduled that the two of you have been kindly deferring. Scripture says as the Lord hath called every one, so let him walk, and ordains it in all churches (1 Corinthians 7:17), and it is the Holy Spirit who is the one who makes two people one flesh rather than one side, which He has been doing in that house for nineteen years while both of you were bracing.