Promise Keeping

People can break their vows in two ways: big exits or little exits

John Ortberg

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What makes a wedding a wedding? For all the paraphernalia we associate with weddings, what is absolutely essential? Most involve expensive clothes, music, ring-bearers, flowers, guest-books, ushers—and the list goes on. Hours upon hours are given to planning out these details. Often the least amount of time and thought is spent on the wedding vows. But I'll tell you a secret: That's what a wedding is. Everything else is disposable.

A marriage doesn't start with feelings. It doesn't start with physical intimacy or by meeting emotional needs. It may not even start with love. A man and woman stand in a church, a chapel, or a backyard and before each other, witnesses, and almighty God, they make a vow. They give their word. That's what a marriage is built on.

A wedding vow is a moving, wonderful, frightening thing because it is a promise for "as long as we both shall live." It's a "no matter what" promise. It's like what God does for the human race when he makes a covenant with us through Christ Jesus—a vow of unfailing, unending love.

This leads to an important question: What exactly did you commit to? The Bible says that "a man shall leave his father and mother, and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh" (Genesis 2:24). In a phrase, you are promising to pursue oneness. Oneness of heart, mind, loyalty, servanthood. Two becoming one.

How are you doing at keeping your word? Is your oneness growing stronger, or is there distance that threatens your promise to love each other? Perhaps the drifting happens rapidly, or perhaps it slowly ebbs. Where ever you are, you can learn to move toward each other daily.

There are two ways that people can break their promise and damage oneness. They either take big exits, or they take little exits. Big exits are the obvious ones: divorce, abandonment, adultery. These are the ones that get our attention. But no couple stands on a platform and makes a vow, planning on taking a big exit. So how does a couple end up there?

Every time you see people take a big exit—you can count on this—they have taken many small exits to lead up to it. They engaged in activities that eroded oneness. They withheld words and actions that would have strengthened oneness. Every day they hid a little, withdrew a little, fantasized a little, or nursed resentment a little. Never did they say: "I think I'll break my promise today." Little exits are subtle. But add up enough little exits, and a big one may be a matter of time.

Now, there's a difference between taking an exit (which destroys community) and allowing space for a husband and wife to be two separate people. "Closing exits" doesn't mean I'm supposed to want to share every waking moment with my spouse and engage only in those pastimes that we can do together. If I spend the afternoon watching football with my Christian brothers, that is not an exit. It's a life-enriching exercise in individuality that will enable me to return home and connect in a deeper and more profound way.

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Originally published in: Marriage Partnership, 2001, Summer

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