50 years and counting – choosing to love
Ben and Emily Smith
Everyone loves a wedding. Weddings are moments of joyful celebration and hope-filled expectation for what is to come. However, as with many things, starting is easy, but the real substance is found in the faithfulness of doing.
Jim and Pam Halpert, my generation's Sam and Diane, are characters in the mockumentary The Office. The show followed their romantic development from attraction through marriage and children. The most powerful scene in their storyline comes in season 9, episode 21. Their marriage had been under significant strain, primarily caused by Jim's pursuit of a job opportunity that was pulling him away from Pam and their children. Pam was frustrated with Jim and unsettled by the unwelcome changes Jim had introduced into their lives. Both were tired of the struggle and had come dangerously close to the point of choosing indifference rather than continuing to struggle through the conflict. The moment I find so powerful comes at the end of the episode, where Jim and Pam have been employing strategies they have learned in marriage counseling. They find the experience unsettling and not particularly effective. It is unclear whether either of them are willing to give their total effort to the struggle.
At the end of the day, Jim prepares to leave again for his out-of-town job. Before leaving, he acknowledges how hard the present moment is but declares his willingness to continue to try. And he encourages Pam to do the same. She responds with less than enthusiastic agreement. It seems that they may have reached a breaking point. But just after Jim walks out the door, Pam looks to his desk and sees that he left his umbrella behind. After a moment to contemplate, she picks up the umbrella and runs out to catch him before he leaves. She catches up to him just as he is stepping into a cab. He thanks her for the umbrella; then, as they both turn to leave, Jim runs back to Pam and wraps her in a full embrace. She hesitates. Her arms awkwardly hang at her side while her husband hugs her tightly.
It is at this moment that the show editors masterfully contrast this moment of conflict with earlier moments of joy. As Jim hugs Pam, she contemplates resisting or reciprocating; the video cuts to scenes from their wedding. In these scenes, Pam beams with joy while the pastor reads 1 Corinthians 13. The contrast between the two moments could not be starker. In one, there is much joy and anticipation but no experience. In the other, experience has produced fatigue and stress. As the words of 1 Corinthians 13 pronounce the glorious truth of God's amazing love, we watch Pam struggle with choosing to love her husband. With each video cut to wedding scenes, we are reminded that their joyful beginning has given way to the reality of doing. As a viewer, you fear Jim and Pam's marriage may not survive.
Then it happens. Pam considered the cost and chose to return her husband's embrace. She raises her arms to reciprocate Jim's embrace. It is a sweet moment indeed. None of the issues that have caused their conflict have been resolved. Yet Pam and Jim have chosen to love each other, which gives hope that they will overcome.
I appreciate this moment in the series because it captures the real struggle of marriage. Marriage is easy on your wedding day. The true cost of promises is cloaked in mystery at the start. Only in the doing and the living are the promises and covenants made on your wedding day proved true. On the wedding day, you choose to wed your spouse. In the years that will follow, you must continue to choose daily or even moment by moment to be faithful to that consequential first choice.
This summer, my parents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. My sister Abbie, and I, along with our spouses and children, traveled to Columbus for the celebration. Everything about the weekend was joyful and good. On Saturday night we enjoyed a meal together with all the family. Afterward, we gathered at the house and played a video for my parents of good wishes from many of their friends. On Sunday, I had the privilege of teaching my dad's Sunday school class; then, we packed a pew for Sunday worship. After church, we took lots of family pictures. Every moment of the weekend was joy-filled.
Ben and Emily Smith
During the weekend, I looked through my parent's wedding photos. In the pictures, they are young, fresh-faced, and smiling. Though it is hard to think of your parents as being other than how you have known them, I know enough to know that the young couple in the photos had no clue what the years ahead would bring. In the photos, they are all smiles and youthful glee. Their faces show no signs of worry, and their smiles look genuinely carefree. There is one particular photo that captured my attention. It was the photo of the moment my parents emerged from the church to leave for their honeymoon. All the wedding guests had lined up beside the door to wish them well as they ran to the car. It was the tradition then to throw rice at departing couples, but because my dad worked for a peanut company, the guests through peanuts. The photo captures the moment of glee just after the covenant making and before the covenant keeping. Peanuts are in the air. Their smiles seem more part of who they are than momentary expressions as they dodge the flying legumes. They were husband and wife, happy to be united in marriage and excited to begin their life together. The photo perfectly captures that most joyful moment.
On Saturday evening, after supper, we gathered in the den in my parents' home to play for them the video of their friends and family wishing them a happy anniversary. The couple that sat on the couch watching the video surrounded by their eight nearly grown grandchildren was much different than the one in the wedding day photo.
Now in their seventh decade of life and fiftieth year of marriage, they are very different people than the couple in the wedding day photo album. Since that day, they have known the grief of burying their parents. They have endured the stress of managing a household budget that sometimes had more demands than resources. They have lost sleep over wayward children and family conflict. They have witnessed and ministered to many friends whose marriages did not survive. And they have had many moments of their own when they had to choose to love the other, not because it was easy but because of the covenant, they made on a hot south Georgia day in June of 1972.
The celebration of a wedding day is fueled by what has begun and will be. The celebration of a fiftieth wedding anniversary is fueled by what has been and remains. For fifty years, in times of joy and sorrow, plenty and poverty, easy and complex, and intimacy and distance, they chose to love one another. Yet, as good and joyous as their wedding day must have been, I think their fiftieth wedding anniversary was exponentially greater. It is greater because of the testimony they have lived, and the faithfulness they have proven to the promise made fifty years earlier.
God created marriage as a tangible testimony of His relationship with His people and church. The church is the bride of Christ, and the second coming is spoken of as a husband returning for his bride. At the wedding ceremony, we read scripture passages that point to this present testimony, but it is in the faithfulness of doing that the testimony is given. For Christians, the greatest moment of our life is the moment of our salvation, the moment that Jesus chose us and called us to Himself. But I suspect that there is a more excellent moment still to come. Like the eclipsing joy of a fiftieth wedding anniversary over the celebration of the wedding day, so will be the eclipsing joy of the second coming of Jesus.
I have long enjoyed watching The Office. Jim and Pam may be my generation's Sam and Diane. However, I have been blessed with something much better than the story of Jim and Pam. For my entire life, I have had a front-row seat to the real-life story of Ben and Emily. It is a true love story of a husband and wife who have chosen daily to love one another and live out the promise they made on their wedding day. What a wonderful story it is.
Happy fiftieth-anniversary, mom and dad! Yours is a beautiful story of faithfulness. Your faithfulness has greatly blessed Abbie and Adam, me and Dana, all of the grandchildren, and so many more.
