last night, lee and i got to meet the man who will marry us. our venue is amazing enough to provide some marriage enrichment sessions for couples who are getting married there to attend. the venue has a “house officiate” that you have the option of using. it was such a surreal moment meeting who will make us husband & wife!
marriage enrichment classes are no joke. and extremely eye opening. jim started the session talking about how many people “dumb down” views of marriage. one way people do this is my exclaiming “i’m marrying my best friend!” or “our marriage will be 50/50” – when in reality, you’re marrying someone to complete you as a whole and marriage should always be 100% on either side. he said that hollywood and movies have really “dumbed down” marriage because you can’t fit a twenty minute ceremony of what it should be into a two hour movie.
he continued by saying that a marriage should mutually complete each other. what is it about lee that completes me & vice versa for him. we had to go around the room and say something, on the spot, that we find in the other that we don’t have in ourselves or something we’d like to better in ourselves that we can derive from our partner. i said that i have a tendency to overanalyze or over-think things; always have! lee is the most calm, soothing person i know that really lets me take a step back and live more in the moment instead of planning the next. lee said that i was a selfless person who continuously tries to help others and often puts their needs above my own.
i still blush. i have an amazing fiancé.
the second point he stressed was to “leave & cleave” when you two become one; that both of you are leaving your parents and starting anew with your own family. he noted that many couples do struggle with this by using phrases like “well if only you would do it like my mom did” or “my dad used to be so handy around the house. why can’t you be more like that?” he told us that this only causes cracks in the foundation of a marriage because for a couple to successfully “leave & cleave” to their new spouse, that person has to be number 1 other than God.
the third point we took away was that your marriage should leave a legacy & asked us ways that we could do so. another bride mentioned your children. i mentioned the impression that you leave on people and referenced the following quote “live your life in such a way that if someone were to speak negatively about you, no one would believe it.” he then told us the story of an elderly woman whose husband would always “give up the right to be right” in disagreements.
that sentence hit me hard.
“give up the right to be right.”
i took that from the enrichment session and we both were so happy to have attended. not only to meet the man who binds us together forever, but to instill more ways for God to be in our relationship.
can i get an amen?
