I recently had a final meeting with
a couple who are getting married next month.
During a leisurely Starbucks conversation, Max (names changed-as always!) said this to me:
“I
had to reach rock bottom in past relationships before I could find Kate. I had
self-imprisoned myself in a gulag of abuse. I knew I wanted better and so I set
out in search of Kate.”
The old cliché that marriage is a
“ball and chain” made no sense to Max, as for him marriage was freedom—to
experience love, to love and to move closer to being the man he wanted to be.
One of my favorite poets, Mark
Doty, observed: “How shall we know
ourselves, except in the clarifying mirror of some other gaze?”
Max and Kate understand that their
wedding is a celebration of choice – a celebration of moving into the light.
And so for them, marriage, with all
of its unknowns and uncertainties, is about overcoming fear: the fear of not
being worthy.
Can I predict the future for any
couple? No, BUT with Max and Kate I can bet my money that theirs is an enduring
love. Why? Because once you’ve “seen”
what they’ve seen, it’s very, very hard to “un-see” it!
In that book which is
my memory,
On the first page of
the chapter that is the day when I first met you,
Appear the words,
‘Here begins a new life.’
Dante Alighieri
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