At our wedding thirty years ago, I picked a trendy pop song for our first dance.
It wasn't Greg's doing. Except for a veto of anything Billy Joel, due to the abusive, anti-Catholic song "Only the Good Die Young", Greg was fine with whatever song I wanted to pick. I really liked a song called "Nevertheless" which was on a Mills Brothers tape that my parents used to play in the car.
I didn't mind that it was old, if not downright elderly, sounding. We were nerds who liked Big Band and classics of bygone eras. But the song had a line or two in it that I thought might be kind of a bummer for a wedding.
Take a listen.
"Nevertheless"
Maybe I'm right, and maybe I'm wrong
Maybe I'm weak and maybe I'm strong
But nevertheless I'm in love with you
Maybe I'm in for crying the blues
But nevertheless I'm in love with you
The terrible chances I'm taking
Fine at the start, then left with a heart that is breaking
And maybe I'll give much more than I'll get
But nevertheless, I'm in love with you.
"A heart that is breaking" and "a life of regret" are the reasons I didn't end up picking the song.
I picked a trendy top forty song called, "Caught up in the Rapture" instead.
The words seemed quite perfect for the occasion.
Nothing else can compare
When I feel the magic of you
Till the storms of life pass us by
Light my life, warm my heart
Say tonight will be just a start
Marriage is a risk and "Nevertheless" acknowledges that fact.
The other song talks about storms of life as if they only come from outside as you stand side by side facing them together. They sometimes do but they also come from within your own sinful heart and from the sinful heart of your beloved as you face off. Sorry to mention it. We'd rather think each other perfect and in perfect harmony. But that's not the truth and thinking so is a set up for disappointment.
What often happens to married couples—especially young twenty-something couples who are "caught up in the rapture"—is that they are not aware of and not open to the risk factor. To them, marriage is a sure thing. You found the perfect person. The perfect person is going to make you happy. That's what you're signing up for. If that fails, you are revoking the contract and looking for a new happiness carrier.
Marriages don't fail because people have bad circumstances from the outside but because they don't have commitment from the inside. People go into them expecting "100% satisfaction guaranteed or your money back."
BUT—It is by admitting the risk up front, and being open to the risk factor, that you actually reduce the risk factor. You are setting yourself up for perseverance, which is an underlying virtue in any happy, lasting marriage.
No relationship that you experience in this world can make you happy all the time.
Even God does not give his saints, his precious intimate friends, people he speaks to and appears to, consolations all of the time. He tests their love with difficulties like dryness in prayer. The reason they are saints is that they don't dump him. They keep on loving him. They keep on believing in him. Their attitude is exactly what you see in the song "Nevertheless." He is the spouse of their soul—nevertheless. They are devoted to him—nevertheless. They are all his—nevertheless.
And what happens? They end up being 100% satisfied forever and ever, Amen. Not just after they die—but all along because they know they are right where they belong.
Thirty years of marriage has taught me that "Nevertheless" is the real love song. It is way more satisfying and way more thrilling than "Caught up in the Rapture." In "Nevertheless" you see the heart of true love which is ready to be tried and tested in commitment and only then yields lasting satisfying results.
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