Smack In The Face

(I’m greatly perturbed at the moment.)

Call me a bad conversationalist, but I really don’t know what to say to someone who speaks horribly of marriage to me, then laughs, and wants me to respond.

An actual conversation from today:

Someone: I can’t get used to your new name on the radio!

Me: I know… sometimes I still type Sanders. I’m still getting used to it too.

Someone: So, how’s married life?

Me: It’s great! Wonderful! I love it! I couldn’t be happier!

Someone: (eye roll)…while it lasts…

SMACK.

An actual conversation from Friday morning:

Someone: You still married?

Me: Yep! Six weeks and going strong!

Someone else: Oh, you’re in that part where you look around and think, THIS is my life?!?

SMACK.

Another actual conversation from Friday:

Someone: Steph is a newlywed!

Someone else: Oh! Congratulations!

Me: Thank you!

Someone: Yes, she got married on Oct. 3, so she’s just now looking around and realizing she’s stuck.

SMACK.

These are actual punches to my face, friends. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to react. If they’re trying to be funny, they aren’t. If they’re trying to attack marriage, they are. When it happens, I just sit there, and stare at the person. It takes me FULL MINUTES after the conversation is over to realize what has happened and how I should have responded.

On some levels, it’s because I initially take it as a personal attack. So you think my marriage is crappy? You don’t even know me! So you think I’m bored with my husband already? You’ve never even met him! You just met me three minutes ago!

But that’s just the surface, and that goes away in a few minutes.

The thing that really breaks my heart – REALLY breaks my heart – is the collective attitude of the world about marriage.

You hear it in those stories. You hear it in the voice of the guy at work who’s a little too ‘manly’ for his own boots when he refers to his wife as the old ball and chain. You see it in the face of the woman who complains and bad-mouths her husband when the girls get together for a martini after work. The boss who jokingly says he’d rather be at work than at home. The housewife who ‘tricks’ her bumbling husband into thinking he’s scored a TV in the garage to watch football and she’s really scored reign of the house for a women’s gathering. And a thousand other stories that we see every day in our own lives or on TV.

The stories themselves are sad. The underlying attitudes are even more depressing. But then?

Then, we LAUGH. We laugh at it.

(sound of my heart breaking)

Can we stop and look at the world we live in? Do we really wonder why divorce rates are so high?

We’ve let sin build up its own view of ‘marriage’ (that’s in quotes because it’s not really marriage). We’ve let Satan build up a straw man of marriage, and then we point to it, call it marriage, make fun of it, and laugh our heads off.

And basically in doing so, we make fun of Christ himself.

Friends and family, let’s be part of turning this tide. I’m not doing a very good job right now, because I typically fail to respond in a timely manner when confronted with a chance to refute this attitude. But I’m going to pray about it, and I hope you will too.

(I feel much better now.)