John and Jane were newly-weds, after the excitement of the
honeymoon phase wore off the seriousness of life began. And they started doing
something they had never done before, not while they were dating and certainly
not in the first few months of marriage. They began to fight. This scared the
couple because both their parents were divorced, and they knew that fighting
could lead them to divorce. Jane’s parents had spilt while she was away at
college, and John, his parents were divorced even before he was even a
teenager. Both of them their greatest fear for their marriage was that one day
they would not want to be together.
For that
reason early in their marriage they developed a ritual they would do each night
after they had had a disagreement or argument. Following a fight they would
take the time they needed and give each other the space they needed. But at the
end of that night they both came to bed. Before either of them crawled in, they
would always have an exchange that went something like this:
The one who
stared the argument would say, “I’m sorry I got upset.”
The other
would respond, “I forgive you. I’m sorry I let the argument go on.”
“It’s okay.
I forgive you. Do you still want to fight?”
“Yes, I
want to fight for our marriage.”
Neither one
of them knew how long their marriage would last, but they knew as long as that
was the answer, they could make it last a little longer. They had hope that
they could take that little longer and turn it into months. Then take the
months, and turn them into years, and the years into decades. Somehow making
the decades into a lifetime. So they could really keep their promise of, “until
death do us part.”
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