Marriage -- A Fine Sacrement

Today's post is going to be about marriage. I like so many people are knee deep in Christmas. If just so happens that nearly halfway in the month of December I married my first love. It was a hard and difficult road for the two of us to find each other again. That said, I've never been happier. Thanks to the gift of her love I have four great pre-fab kids, as well as a beautiful little daughter who just hit the six month mark.

So what the heck does this have to do with my new-found Catholic faith? Nothing, and everything. Nothing in that currently we are both working on getting our annulments done through the Church. Before then we were both married outside the faith and based on the outcomes you can easily say it was less than happy or successful. So why does it matter? Marriage is a sacrament and thus an "institution" that needs be be taken seriously. For me, that's why I stuck in a marriage longer than I should have the first time around -- I took my promise very seriously even if the marriage was literally poison. Without going into specific details, there were lots of failures. Chiefly was taking God out of the equation and yet staying in the failing marriage BECAUSE of Him.

When I met up with my wife, it was about 25 years after some damn fool teenage boy dumped her for another girl. On Valentines Day. Two days before her birthday. And yes. Here soon, that too will be included in my first Reconciliation; one of the many things that I haven't forgiven myself for much less felt that God has either. At the time, I was separated, and living on my mother's living room floor. I was going back to church at a local Baptist church and everything was going as well as one could expect. It took an act God to leave my ex-wife, and it took another to meet much less talk to my current wife. However, once I did I knew. Thankfully, with a yes on Thanksgiving 4 years ago so did she.

I cannot begin to express how blessed I am. This is the one Sacrament that I, excuse the pun, "brought with me" and one that I hope very soon to get cleared up. It's likely at least partially because of this marriage that I explored and learned about the Catholic faith (my father-in-law passed and the funeral was Catholic) and expressed a desire to become Catholic, only to find that it was also the wish of my beloved wife as well. She was searching on her own, while I was listening to local Catholic radio.

There's a ton of blessings wrapped up with marriage. You get a partner that you can trust, that God gave you for a reason. You get support, you get a ton of things. The trick is to GIVE and that's the part that we all struggle with both in and out of marriage. I thank the Lord for my second chance to be with my soulmate. I just wish I had listened to Him and my heart in the first place, rather than being a scared kid who happened to have hit the jackpot early.