Singularity: Sunny-side up

It’s couples like my aunt and uncle making me shake my head in confusion. If it can be so right, how is it we get it so wrong?
I live in a state where divorce is what you do in your twenties, like the extra piercing that irritates your skin and the apartment that always smells like refried beans and bananas.

The state rate of divorce was so drastically affecting our economy that in 1999 the governor created the Oklahoma Marriage Initiative. This was basically the government’s way of saying, “Seriously, they’re vows. Lest you forget.”

I was waiting for some kind of martial law to take affect. Couples arguing over the checkbook balance would be visited by uniformed officers appearing at their door with candles, Szechwan chicken salad, and Kenny G playing, “Forever In Love.”



Instead, what I’ve seen is a brittle binding of two people that may or may not last their entire lives. It all just depends. You know? We need our freedom. We deserve to be happy. We can’t let something like marriage vows stand in the way.

The result is a reentry of people in their late 20’s, their 30’s, even their 40’s, into the Sea of Singleness, known for it’s many fishes.

But spending a leisurely day at the beach isn’t as easy anymore. Now they’re maneuvering around anklet chains of regret to rub on some SPF 45. Then, with one eye on the horizon to see if anything is biting today, they rush into the waves thinking “this time” they’ll swim without sinking.
Where’s the life jacket? Or maybe better phrased, who are we turning to for salvation of this life?

I’ve watched so many of my friends go through, over and under a divorce. For all the pain and agony, questions and confusion, I think they deserve some kind of college credit or at least a divorced discount at the movie theater. Free popcorn for those who have filed. Free drink refills for those waiting on their next court date.
I’m making jokes, but divorce is tragic. Truly, completely, unendingly tragic. Two people once stood before God and witnesses and declared their eternal love for each other. Now they can’t stand to be in the same house.

What is happening? Why are our relationships bleeding at the seams? And who can repair the rips in the fabric of forever? Wait. I know this one. One man. One name. Five letters. I’ll give you one guess.

Things have been confusing in relationships since the Adam and Eve catastrophe. That icky serpent and his forked tongue put us in quite the mess. He wound around the tree, wound around that apple, and we’ve been wound up ever since.



There is, thankfully, a Savior. And He is where our search for the healthy relationship, healed hurts, mended hearts, must start. We should talk about gender roles, communication issues, global male/female misunderstandings and all the many faces and perfumes of dating.
And we will.
Later.
But first things first. Let’s not put the cart before the horse or the chicken before the egg or sharing our life with another individual before we are a whole individual ourselves. Marriage will not make you happy. It can’t. Impossible. You are expecting too much.
What it can do, what is should do, is provide you with someone willing to share their happiness, their peace, their contentment and completeness with you and you with them. And that means we’ve got a few things to look at inside before we can get to the outside. You can’t expect to run the marathon if you’re bleeding internally. And that’s exactly what dating and marriage is, a life-long marathon with glory and sweat and pulled muscles and high-doses of oxygen to the brain and a cheering section all your own.

We MUST have a foundation, a healthy start, like a high-protein breakfast to end the fasting of the night. God wants to serve us a Sunshine breakfast with our issues cooked over easy and two slices of crisp contentment , a side of toast and fresh squeezed optimism. He’s inviting us to His table for a feast. The chair is empty and waiting. We just need to get out of our own way and sit our butt down.
Instead, we move from relationship to relationship, from person to person, constantly seeking the face that will plug the hole we feel. The emptiness, I’m afraid, can’t be sealed by any mortal. And the faster we figure that out, the faster we’ll be moving easily with the current toward a healthy relationship with the opposite sex, be it using the butterfly, back stroke, or dog paddle.