LEARNING FROM MARRIAGE

...That the moment of conjugal union is inmitments that constitutes our family is both burden and trinsically more significant than the others is not as evident...

...Yet it is precisely in Diana's refusal to conform to the emotional expectations I brought into our marriage that our marriage becomes salvific for me...

...the glare she would give me...

...I lack growing boys that call me to a relinquishment of self, it is the the confidence in my own emotional life to dare to give it children themselves...

...been the cautious exception rather than the rule in the ChrisCommonweal 19 September 8, 2000 tian tradition...

...The image that comes to value of married couples learning to achieve simultaneous my mind for what began to happen is drawn from a child- orgasm...

...For example, in his e survived that summer, though to this day I am younger years our present pope once wrote some rather not sure how...

...From a distance I gaze upon my children and long hold and the emotional demands placed upon me by four to know the "cleanness" and purity of their emotions...

...ing how much theological reflection on marriage (usually by celibates) still focuses on marital sex...

...We are parents of jects first...

...My own penchant for order I story inextricably into mine...

...When I deny him a request, I easily overwhelmed by the emotional demands of parenting...

...There is plenty of marital Indeed, the children shape me as much as I shape them...

...I am awash with gratitude for this one person who blessings of marriage and family...

...Commonweal 1 8 September 8, 2000 we bargained for, or what we stayed up until the wee hours In the adolescent fantasies of many (at least for us testosfantasizing about in the heady days of our engagement...

...We do not get nudge along but can never wholly direct...

...One's marriage partner is not a ci- that (please God, if I could just have a bit more time...

...I am learning, haltingly, to seek out in snatches of household is indeed, as my friend Tim so aptly named it, prayer and solitude an inner equilibrium to ground me my salvation...

...She was my salvation," he said simply and emphati- tion...

...hood memory of being at the stern of a large river boat, mes- This is pretty racy stuff from a future pope, and knowing merized by the soothing movement of the paddlewheel churn- something of our church's dubious history where valorizing up the murky river water and propelling the boat up- ing sexual pleasure is concerned, I gratefully accept his view stream...

...Still, I was somewhat hesitant arms...

...Unafraid to discuss the sacramental significance of you like, all I know is that we began working harder to voice sexual union, the young Karol Wojtyla even wrote of the our resentments and frustrations...

...This is one of the great secrets of marriage-a relationship shamelessly marketed for the hope of intimacy it offers, in fact, confronts us with the shocking that I am passing on some quasi-genetic personality flaw otherness of our spouse...

...an intelligent, athletic, and attractive woman...

...Kenosis, again...

...At the time we were recycle of our own relations...

...Yet two weeks shape us in unseen ways...

...They grow, we are each half-selves looking for a mate as our comple- and we discover, as we nurture that growth, the most subtion, but because we find ourselves in giving ourselves to lime of vocations...

...dying, to be sure, but it is usually a foreshadowing of some Exuberant in play, fierce in anger, yet, paradoxically quick to quick marital exit...

...I recently visited member the unadulterated pride I felt when my wife final- them at their school, and though they were visibly excited to ly received her graduate degree as I recalled all of the late have me at the lunchroom table with them, they were less so nights I would go to bed while she stayed up studying...

...later, the three of us were going to an Astros baseball game Shared plans and dreams, dashed or fulfilled, and the when both of them spontaneously grasped my hands on confidence that we can recognize one another's idiosyn- each side as we walked through the parking lot...

...If I am honest ays down this road-is a venomous bitterness and resent- with myself, there is a hubris in overestimating my impact ment that ultimately dooms the marriage...

...are ways in which, in spite of our closeness, my wife and I view our shared world in notably different ways...

...I do worry, however, about a latent the engine into reverse...

...There the few negative comments...

...My colleagues would often laugh at my consternation...

...That summer saw a temporary issues in moral thegradual but real reversal in the with you Catholics...

...As a Christian I believe marriage is a place where I am invited into the dying and rising of Christ...

...Yet before I could hours a night...

...Diana, I don't hesitate to add, was (and my dissertation defense in the evening...

...time off," while I complained about needing to prepare for "Tim, was there any one particular thing that was signif- my dissertation defense...

...Seen in the right light, knows my deepest fears and stands ready as a "balm for they are also profound intimations of resurrection...

...We are made for communion, not because stirs within us...

...Now, after more than a decade of marriage, I understand what he was trying to say in a way I couldn't have imagined as a young single man...

...Put simply, while sal- blessing of sexual intimacy is more a gentle seal ratifying vation is always God's work in us, it often feels like our precious moments encountered outside the bedroom than work as we struggle to dispose ourselves to God's saving ac- the symbolic summit of marital love...

...To help me sort things out, I sought predicament, if not in the same spot...

...I have to complete all outstanding tasks before I can four young boys and in part because of them our married life allow myself the pleasure of relaxation...

...I must unpack all has taken on a mood and a texture that we could not have of my bags after coming home from a long trip before I can anticipated...

...Marriage, like all on their still young lives...

...being drawn to a different place...

...We packed up all of the baby paraphernalia, clothes, books, and my computer, piled into our little Toyota, and Richard R. Gaillardetz teaches theology at the University of Saint Thomas School of Theology in Houston, Texas...

...I am not prepared to abandon alTim had in mind...

...I am blessed when a night come mature, capable, caring adults...

...ending in argument is followed by a day begun anew with Our twins, David and Andrew, are nine and I have ala kiss...

...hopes, and expectations...

...I knew well that what was ly these moments, when we find ourselves drawn out of happening was simply a healthy developmental process...

...to creep into each of our minds that this whole marriage At the time, Tim's response made me even more uncom- project might have been a horrible mistake...

...I acted noncratic "tells"-those slight facial expressions and character- chalantly, holding their hands firmly, while uttering a silent istic postures that reveal much about the emotional state of prayer of gratitude...

...The paddlewheel's steady rhythm di- romanticism in the Catholic tradition regarding marital sex, minished, slowly coming to a perhaps in response to more stop, and then, after a discernible austere views drawn from our pause, the wheel only gradual- past...

...I become frightened forged into something new...

...Here in this home that we Catholics rightly amidst a hurricane of youth and emotion and chaos beyond call an ecclesia domestica, the church of the household, I am my control...

...bridgeable chasm...

...I would return at 4:30 P.M., to find Diana in the same to make a commitment...

...UIP I can recall a period early in our marriage when the salvific nature of marriage impressed itself on me...

...terone-charged males) the benefits of marriage began and There, little more than two years into our marriage, we found ended with the prospects of sex without guilt...

...Neither of us slept more than four sonal question in such an abstract way...

...am often startled by the emotional force of his anger...

...Here the hammer strikes Like most parents, I find myself projecting onto my chil- hot iron often and I flinch as by God's grace I am being dren a lifetime of my own insecurities...

...The classic "first-born" child, I was raised to be reCommonweal 2 0 September 8, 2000 sponsible and to perform in order to obtain my parents' approval...

...Why can't I establish parenting about a school project undertaken with his favorite preschool office hours...

...in marriage of being misunderstood...

...I am a theologian, so I will not hesitate to put an explicitly theological spin on what marriage has taught me...

...Salvation is always the work of God and together the spiritual significance of conjugal relations but, yet Catholicism insists that there is a kind of cooperation as time goes on, I am inclined to believe that the distinctive in our free response to God's grace...

...Theoretically the clothes...

...There is a biblical term for what can happen here, kenosis...

...And, yet, there are mogested we must imitate the children, it had nothing to do ments when I shed my status as an emotional bystanderwith angelic innocence...

...The nights were an endless sucicant in helping you decide to marry Ellen...

...our own world to delight in our beloved's accomplishments, Still, I felt a sadness that I could not dispel...

...the way of the hermit has always church teaching has yet to fully understand...

...We are an affectionate family, but the older boys are and accepted by Diana...

...I was intrigued by the possibility that she saw something deeper within me...

...I am blessed when I return home from work venting ready begun to recognize some subtle changes in our relafrustrations and petty grudges yet still find myself loved tionship...

...There is no doubt that tion...

...Let me try to explain...

...The evenings were spent in Having exhausted our sports-related "guy talk" over a petty bickering as Diana pleaded for some well-deserved Wendy's hamburger, I awkwardly broached the subject...

...I can receive so many of the graces thanks in no small part to our parental ministrations, beof my marriage only as pure gift...

...E3 Commonweal 2 1 September S, 2000...

...Yet I was first attracted to Diana because she did not seem much interested in my accomplishments...

...blessing, cross and resurrection...

...Paschal "dying" is an altogether different forgive, I see in my children an emotional clarity that has matter...

...Yet the vocations of spouse and parent simas mystery...

...If the sexual intimacy Then I would call my wife and read them to her, sensing of marriage is a tender grace, the experience of sharing a with relief that at least she knew of the hidden wounds I marriage bed with one who at this particular moment may carried that inclined me to give a disproportionate weight to not understand me, can be terrifying in its loneliness...

...The alternative to this acceptance of each other's ply do not wait while I "work things out...

...I sensed that if I was ever going to marry this was the as Diana sat on the couch with two screaming babies in her time and this was the woman...

...Diana was stuck in still is...

...I was teaching all day, and preparing for for nearly two years...

...They laugh, and something long dormant firmation...

...We are blessed in acknowledging their another...

...Here the kenotindividuality-and God knows I have made occasional for- ic movement is mostly one of letting them be...

...but in point of fact ate time when it was the faces of our children that made us we usually experience it as an irritating difference, pure and try harder to heal whatever rift threatened to become an un- simple...

...At the time our twins were only two months old and I was just completing my doctoral studies...

...This attitude runs headlong into within the one sacrament of holy orders (deacon, priest- my wife's unique capacity to enjoy the present moment, presbyter, and bishop) and there are times when I think the putting aside all but the most necessary of tasks for another church would have done well to create two degrees of mar- time (she'll unpack her bag when she actually needs those riage: one with children and one without...

...It is not t is a blessed comfort to know that this other that our values are different, but rather that we construe person, whose own story began long before I events differently and give a different priority to the tasks we appeared in her life, has chosen to weave her face...

...I might receive twenty positive There is a kind of "dying" that also happens in marriage evaluations only to be devastated by the two negative cri- and family life...

...When I think version, metanoia, means not of those events in my marriage just a shift in one's views or opinions but a fundamental that symbolically evoke the spiritual meaning of my marchange in direction...

...The difficul- the seminar was an ordained ties did not disappear, but each of the Methodist minister and at one of us seemed to recognize, be- marriage covenant' point in our discussion she exyond our own pain and frus- claimed in exasperation: "I tration, the effort the other seems so much don't get it with you Catholics...

...Foolishly, I agreed to teach in a summer program at a university some four hundred miles away...

...One of the women in ward one another...

...In Catholic teaching there are three ministries flop on the bed and rest...

...I was raised in a family governed by the principles of world of emotions and discoveries is painted as if solely for reward and punishment with very little unconditional afour enjoyment...

...it is an invitation to a truly It is bedrock biblical wisdom that the human person was ascetical vocation...

...I love my children in ways that can wrestling with boys or singing a song with them in the never be put into words, but there is no hiding the fact that car-that I think I may indeed be recapturing some great they are imperfect creatures, capable of the same pettiness, lost thing...

...And yet, as with that first Easter the annual ritual of reading students' course evaluations event, this resurrected life comes only out of loss and death...

...There was no great epiphany or provocative things about conjugal relations, offering perW profound experience that constituted the clear spectives that would have made his papal predecessors turning point...

...Yet it is not just the chaos of a noisy house- teacher...

...I re- playing affection in front of their peers...

...Both of us resented the other if only because backtrack, Tim shot back his answer with a confidence that we dared not resent the children...

...There is a joy found in the moments no longer as much at ease as they once were with my disof celebration in one another's personal achievements...

...The dynamism of giving and graciously receiving, dependence upon us, and blessed again when they grow I am now inclined to believe, lies at the heart of the salvific out of that dependence from children to adolescents and, character of marriage...

...For they too are sturdily, resiliently sacraments, is paschal to the core and consequently it is as other, a mystery unfolding that I may feel compelled to much about dying as it is about new life...

...I was thirty years old, and I had been and broken-down furniture greeted us as we walked into in a steady, reasonably contented relationship our apartment...

...I remember early in my teaching career when life that is promised us...

...resentment, and mean-spiritedness that sets us adults to After eleven years of marriage I now realize that our warring...

...Let me offer an example...

...would be met with dread...

...Whatever Jesus meant when he sug- such open and honest expression...

...Since we have been married, however, I have often found myself looking for her approval and affection as if she were my parent...

...In any event, I have become convinced that my "sal- a moment of conjugal intimacy and a moment Diana and I vation," the spiritual transformation that God wishes to ef- spend together with our children in our weekly family meetfect in me, transpires within the crucible of my relationship ing or by ourselves late at night discussing the events of the with my wife and children...

...Yet I keep trying to "manage" the relationship with my kids the ten minutes later he will be sitting on my lap telling me way I do with my students...

...It is surprisourselves staring into the abyss...

...they cry, and our hearts break...

...I was being called to a life munion...

...I would leave at 7:30 in the morning gether...

...Concrete floors, few windows, ural step...

...Commonweal was "A Time to Wait" (December 4,1998...

...Many of us could secretly confess a dark and desper- riage preparation/enrichment talks...

...His last article for "Here's where we sit and look at each other...

...our partner-contribute to the spiritual cement that binds us Such seemingly mundane moments are but a few of the together...

...This is not what fortable and I dismissed it...

...the new my wounds...

...Certainly, chief leads me to take on systematically the least pleasant proamong marriage's blessings are children...

...But it is an asceticism that a good deal of not created for isolation...

...All of this talk of marital sex as that mutual recognition trig- the 'sublime expression of the gered a reversal...

...LEARNING FROM MARRIAGE The sacrament that just won't quit Richard R. Gaillardetz When I started to think about getting married headed off to live in a dingy building that appeared to have some eleven years ago it hardly felt like a nat- once been an army barrack...

...long since become jumbled and even duplicitous in me...

...Authentic married life, I think, has a salvific character that is not merely psychological or emotional...

...Marital "intimacy" was made me wonder whether he had been waiting for me to the last thing on our minds as each of us fought off exhausask...

...It would be easy to speak of this as the wonderful children are distinct from our marital relationship yet they "complementarity" that our differences bring to our marare often the most visible sign of what our union has come riage (one tends to hear this kind of thing in annoying marto be...

...In short, I am increasingly convinced that my relationship with my wife, and with our children, is the spiritual "place" where I will work out my salvation...

...Sure- when I gave them a parting hug...

...As the vessel approached the dock the pilot shifted as a welcome corrective...

...I had best not describe out a good friend who had been married for several years...

...own powers and resources...

...ology...

...Another example emerges out of our different families of Our children's faces are canvases upon which a wondrous origin...

...ny, kenosis is the call to a self-emptying or dying to our needs, I only said some marriages are made in heaven...

...Was this the "salvation" that It was a telling remark...

...For my husband and me, sex is more about joyful of care and concern for another that seemed beyond my play than about making some symbolic gesture...

...marriage covenant' seems so The biblical word for con- much nonsense...

...spouse was putting forth, and nonsense...

...My marriage, I am convinced, was call- riage I think of my family at worship together receiving Coming me to such an interior change...

...much of this reality on television...

...In this regard, I recall durly and with the utmost effort ing my doctoral studies particbegan to turn in the opposite di- "I don't get it ipating in a seminar on conrection...

...This interlocking set of com- day are related...

...Call it the grace of the sacrament ifblush...

...My Similarly, the children also call me to a "dying...

...Saint Paul used the term to describe what it was for Christ to abandon all divine prerogatives in order to enter fully into the experience of being human...

...The All of this talk of viewing church teaching on arpattern of caustic complaints and tificial contraception and resarcastic responses slowly gave marital sex as the course to reproductive techway to a new pattern of care to- 'sublime expression nologies...

...Somewhere during those four weeks the thought began cally...

...I derive son Brian has a temper that I keep trying to attribute to his an almost inexhaustible delight from our children, yet I am mother's side of the family...

...I have pher to be decoded but an inscrutable person to be embraced not yet purged...

...When she refuses to respond in that way I become wounded and can be reduced to adolescent pouting...

...he vocation of marriage is an invitation to be stretched, drawn out to an emotional and relaT tional "far country...

...For those of us who fulfill our baptismal call to follow Jesus in and through the sacrament of matrimo- "Dasnmit, I didn't say all marriages were made in heaven...

...cession of interruptions as each baby needed to be fed at I immediately felt embarrassed for posing such a per- three-hour intervals...

...Consider the relatively common experience tiques...

...Clear- the apartment with twin infants and no friends or extended ly it was time to make some decisions about our future to- family to support her...