Weddings Are About The Marriage

A few weeks ago, a colleague and great friend began his marriage.  The Nuptial Mass was beautiful and the party was lots of fun.  This weekend, some other longtime (and very special) friends are celebrating the start of their marriage.  We (my wife and I) couldn’t be more happy for these couples.  We know how incredible marriage can be and pray for only the best for these and all couples as they start into their vocation of marriage.

Often times, the wedding events can get the better of a couple and the point and purpose is lost in the colors, the flowers, the cake and the music – among a slew of about a million other ‘details’.  We experienced this in our wedding preparations, to some extent, and know that it is a temptation for most couples.  To keep it all in perspective… the wedding is all about the marriage.  The marriage is all about sanctification!  To be one with your helpmate and to help her get to Heaven.  To be blessed (if it be God’s will) with children and to help them get to Heaven.

A topic that I am convicted by is, as many of you have read before, my saying “Make the Choice to Love.”  It is so necessary and, in my estimation, the only way to give yourself fully to your spouse – by making the loving choice 100% of the time.  Below is a previous article that I wrote for iibloom.com called “The Choice to Love.”  I hope you like it and I hope it is helpful.

“Early in our marriage, my wife would ask me, in a somewhat sarcastic tone, “Are you making the choice to love right now?” It would stop me dead in my tracks to realize that I wasn’t. I like to think of myself as having a strong head on my shoulders and an ability to admit when I’m wrong. When my wife would ask that question, I knew that, in fact, I wasn’t making the choice to love and that I was dead wrong. I was not giving my wife the love and respect that she deserved. I took the unity that we had promised to one another in our wedding vows and I shattered it, so that I could be right. My need to be right was why I would argue. I would argue because I was stubborn. I was stubborn because I was self-centered. Notice that each of these scenarios containschoice and action. Instead of needing to be right, I should compromise and come to a common-ground understanding. Instead of arguing, I should suck up my pride and admit to my portion of the wrong doings and never, under any circumstances, should I place blame. (Placing blame activates defense mechanisms. Once defense mechanisms have been activated, good luck coming to the before mentioned common-ground understanding.) Instead of being stubborn, I should be humble. Instead of being self-centered, I should be marriage centered. I should make the choice to love.

If I always make the choice to love, I am making the decision that will best allow my marriage to grow and succeed. Love is a verb and requires action. The choice to love removes selfishness, pride and arrogance. Making the choice to love means and assures me that:

1. I am making the best decision for my marriage.
2. I am making the best decision for my spouse.
3. I am making the best decision for my family.
4. I am making the best decision for my family’s future.
5. I am making the best decision for myself. (By putting myself on this list, I am not forgetting that I am an integral part of the success or failure of my marriage.)

(The best decision, in this context, means making the decision that I know to be the best, at the time, with the knowledge and understanding that I have. The best decision is made with clear conscience and free from clouded judgment.)

The most important aspect of making the choice to love is a commitment from both spouses. Making the choice to love does not work when only one of the spouses participates. If you are in a relationship where your spouse does not respond to being asked to make the choice to love, I suggest that you have a serious conversation with them about their actions and how it might negatively affect your marriage relationship. (This is not gender specific, both the husband and the wife must make every effort to make the choice to love.) Insist on this, your marriage is counting on you. This principle will not work if both parties are not fully committed. We made a commitment to each other that whenever one of us mentions “make the choice to love,” we promise to immediately stop our behavior and make the conscious decision to love. We promised one another. It requires devotion and perseverance. We put aside our bad habits, pride and selfish tendencies and choose to love the other fully and without reservation.

The saying, “Make the Choice to Love,” holds a great amount of depth. It radically transformed our marriage. I want everyone to love marriage, either their own or simply the thought of marriage. It is possible for everyone to have an amazing, loving and wonderful life-giving marriage. “Make the Choice to Love.”

The Ultimate Goal

I wrote this article at the beginning of 2011 around the time of Super Bowl XLV for iibloom.com.  Now, as the NFL regular season, NCAA FB regular season and MLB postseason, comes near, it is a good reminder of our ultimate goal.  Hope you enjoy.

For professional athletes, the goal of their career is to become a champion. For players in the National Football League, the Super Bowl is the goal. To hold the Vince Lombardi Trophy and forever go down in history as a champion. To wear an incredibly large, diamond-encrusted ring. To have “Super Bowl Champion” added to your name. But how does one become a Super Bowl champion?

For most, the road to the Super Bowl is a long one. Most have played football since their adolescence and made their way through the ranks playing pee wee football, middle school, high school and college football. Some even had stints in arena football, foreign leagues and on semi-professional teams. They have devoted themselves to countless practices, to weight lifting, running, learning, watching game tape, team work and being coached. They have put in endless hours getting better at what they do. They never give up, striving for perfection.

Now, as the players from the two teams heading to Super Bowl XLV prepare for the biggest game of their careers, their “football past” comes to a head. All of the hard work, the determination, the commitment, the struggle…will it pay off? Will they be rewarded for their work? Only one team, the players, coaches and personnel, will be crowned champions.

Let us now correlate this to our own lives and more specifically, our spiritual lives. If we want to attain the goal, which should always be Heaven, we must put in even more work than professional athletes. Unlike the teams in the Super Bowl, we all have the chance to be crowned! We must, each and every day, place our priority on our spiritual well-being. We can look to the example of these athletes, much like St. Paul wrote in the Scriptures, “compete so as to win.” The example that athletes give us, as to how commitment and endurance can pay off, is a great example to follow. However, instead of being committed to physical practices, weight lifting, running and watching game tape, we should be committed to the Sacraments, to prayer, to spiritual reading, to personal growth in virtue and so on. For us, our hard work is not for the temporal world. Our hard work is not for a perishable crown, a trophy, a diamond-encrusted ring, or history books. Our hard work will be the reward of eternal salvation with God the Father in Heaven.

It seems to me that the hardest thing in life (my “game” situation) is that I allow all the little stuff to prevent me from giving it my all, and I get side tracked from the priority of competing with excellence and I fail to train like I used to when I was an athlete. I sort of “let life happen to me” instead of living life. I think about this a lot and constantly have to remind myself to be diligent in my spiritual training. If only I gave my spiritual training the same effort I used to give my athletic training, maybe then I’d reach my ultimate goal.

7 Days of Super Bowl Stuff -SBXLIV- Day 1

Super Bowl XLIV is nearly upon us.  The potentially epic battle between two of the National Football League’s biggest “gunslingers” will commence next Sunday February 7th, and the game proves to be one of the most exciting Super Bowls in recent history.  (It’s unlikely that this year’s game will top last year’s, especially the finish, by my team, the 6-Time World Champion Pittsburgh Steelers!)  Peyton Manning from the Indianapolis Colts and Drew Brees from the New Orleans Saints plan to take their teams to victory, but there can be only one winner.

I hear lots of discussion about these two quarterbacks, who also captain their teams.  On the one hand, you’ve got the likable character of Peyton Manning, the face of the Colts for the past 12 years and a common face in mainstream advertising.  Manning’s intensity and incredible vision on the field make him one of the elite at the position.  He’s been league MVP four times, including this season.  He won the Super Bowl in 2006.  He’s going to be hard to beat.

On the other hand, you’ve got the unlikely story of the New Orleans Saints, and their quarterback Drew Brees.  In 2005, Hurricane Katrina nearly destroyed the Louisiana Superdome, but after a nearly-$200 million dollar renovation, the team made it back to their home and worked their way to an almost perfect season in 2009.  Starting out 13-0 this season, the Saints were highly favored in the NFC to make it to the Super Bowl, and they did just that.  They did it behind the leadership and incredible ability of Brees.  Personally, I think both players are likable men.  I think they show incredible leadership and striking ability on the field.  I don’t have a preferred team in this case, but I’m predicting that Manning and the Colts will end up winning in a high-scoring, (poorly defensed) game.  Colts will win Super Bowl XLIV 38-31.

Ponder this for a moment…

Imagine if, when it came down to eternity, only one “team” was given the prize of salvation.  Only the winning team was awarded everlasting life with God the Father and the losing team, went to hell.  If you were on one of those teams, wouldn’t you put all your heart and soul into doing everything you could to be the winning team?  Well, the fact of the matter is that instead of it being a football game, it’s an actual war.  The battle is taking place, as we speak, for souls.  There is a winning side, and there is a losing side.  The winners receive uncontrollable joy, peace and love with God in Heaven.  The losers receive the exact opposite – the absence of love.  Knowing this, why is it that we allow ourselves to play on the losing team?  We have the ability to play on the winning team and the game has already been played.  Jesus Christ already died on the cross for us, and won us the victory.  You have the choice, today and everyday, to play on Christ’s winning team.  His team is playing for something more important than the Vince Lombardi Trophy.  There’s no time to lose.  Suit up, and play on the winning team today!

Man up!

GUEST BLOGGER: “Two Stories” by Ryan Kraeger

Ryan Kraeger was born in upstate New York, second of seven children, raised on a farm and homeschooled from first grade to highschool. He graduated at seventeen and joined the military the same week, choosing the MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) of Combat Engineer because he thought the video looked cool (it was primarily composed of explosions). Since then he has done many and varied things in the Army, including loading baggage on planes in Fort Hood Texas, spending a year in the Republic of Korea, patrolling and raiding in Iraq, and building bridges and uncovering IED’s in Afghanistan. Currently he is in training to be a Green Beret, learning his target language, Korean, before going on to the world’s finest and most intensive medic course.  Ryan is also an avid reader and amateur writer, you can read more of his writing at his website.

Two Stories:  Stories bump, stories merge, stories permeate each other. Stories can even unite. Only God can keep track of all the stories and how they interact. It is a vast, complex, multi-dimensional web, a tapestry of infinite complexity and beauty. The work of God in each life is not separate from His work in every life. What He does for me, He is doing for everyone else in the world, through me. Whatever He does for anyone else, He does for me, through them, whether we ever meet or not. It is God’s nature to be a union, and it is His nature to bring about union among His creatures, little by little and partially in this world, and then finally and totally in the next world, where all who are in union with Him will be in union with each other.  We get hints of it, even now.

Imagine a young girl, maybe fifteen or sixteen, who is in a bad dating relationship in high school. Her boyfriend is controlling, orverbally abusive, or is pressuring her to have sex or join in with his drug or alcohol habit, or whatever the case may be. She has compromised too much with too many, and isn’t sure how much she has left to give up, or why she’s bothering anymore. She’s not an innocent little girl anymore. She feels tarnished. Her whole life is a scramble to find acceptance, which for her means popularity with the right bunch of teenage girls, and being noticed by the right teenage boys. Her relationship with her parents and siblings has completely unraveled. She is lost, drifting, miserable, empty, and too busy to notice it. All her thought and energy is bent on the one thing that she thinks will keep her head above water, keep her life meaningful and worthwhile, and he isn’t worth the time of day. The preoccupation consumes her, and she doesn’t know what’s wrong, or where she should turn, or what she should do. Now, imagine that one day she is sitting somewhere, perhaps looking out the window of the school bus, or sitting on a park bench, or standing in a group of teenagers on the corner. Purple streaked hair, too much makeup, tight jeans, halter top, book bag and IPod, she looks just like any one of millions of girls her age, but she is not. She is God’s beloved daughter, His Princess, His Darling. I think God sometimes sends parents only one child, as a symbol of how much He loves each one of us, as if I were the only one.

Let’s put our girl on the bus. She’s sitting on her seat, looking out the window, with one hand jealously clutched by the boy who is sitting next to her. She lets him hold her hand, not because she really enjoys it, but just because that is what you do. If you’re in a relationship, you hold hands, you sit on his lap, you argue about how far you are willing to go. That’s just what you do.

Suddenly, through the window, she sees another couple. They are very old, in their sixties or seventies or eighties or something. To her teenage mind they hardly even register as people anymore. They are like museum pieces, totally irrelevant to her world of hard music, slamming lockers, filthy jokes and innuendo, and constant noise, noise, noise, noise. She has passed by this same couple sitting on their porch a hundred times and never seen them, but her King has a gift for her today. He opens her eyes, for a second, an instant, a heartbeat, just long enough. The old man takes the old woman’s hand and smiles at her. The old woman smiles back. All hell screams in fury, as years of lies, deceit, hate, sneering and malice are threatened all in an instant. They rush around, frantically trying to crush the new thoughts and wonderings and vague, painful longings, and they are mostly successful. They are very good at what they do. Before the bus reaches the corner, their rotten construction is standing in all its ugliness once again. God lets it go, because He knows more than they do. Something has been planted deep in her heart, and though she forgets in a minute, anxious not to threaten the card castle she has so carefully built for herself, she can never be the same again. One old man, on an ordinary day, for no particular reason other than that he just felt like it, did what he’d been doing for fifty years. He loved his wife. He never met that teenage girl, but for ever after her heart will be just a little harder to satisfy. She will want just a little more from the man in her life, her standards will be just a little bit higher. It will cause her no end of grief, because the higher your standards, the easier they are to disappoint, but her heart will have moved one fraction closer to realizing the dangerous truth, that she is more precious than this entire planet, and all the galaxies of the universe. Her Prince came to earth and died for her, and so she deserves more. All hell will stand between her and that truth, but because one old man loved his wife, her heart moved a fraction closer to it, and it can never be moved back.

7 Days of Virtue; Day 6 – Hope.

Think of virtues like your muscles.  You work your muscles out so that they can perform for you when needed.  Virtue is the same way.  You practice, work on the virtue and then, when the time comes, the virtue is there and ready.

Day 6 of the 7 Day Journey through the Virtues: DAY 6 – HOPE.

Hope – the virtue by which we desire the kingdom of Heaven as our happiness.  Because of hope, we trust in God’s promise to help us.  Hope is the bridge between faith and love.  Hope allows us to keep our eyes on our goal of Heaven.  Hope keeps us going, especially when times are tough, because of the promise of Heaven. 

Despair is the opposing vice to hope.  Despair is the belief that God will not forgive me for my sins.  It is, simply put, giving up.  When you give up (on God or on yourself) you believe that God can’t really help you.  There’s also something that can appear to be hope, which we call a counterfeit vice, called presumption.  When we presume, we believe that we’ll get to our goal without God’s help.  This is not depending on God and not seeing the need to.

Hope is the unending desire to see God, to know God and to be with God.  Never lose hope, never give up, never give in.  Living a good life, striving for excellence, serving our neighbor… that is living a hopeful life.  You have the power to pass on hope to those around you who are in despair.  More than ever, people are despairing because they lose the belief that God cares about them.  When you go it alone, you will despair.  Stay strong, our hope is in the Lord!

Man up!