Secrets

I've stumbled across two or three conversations in the last week that centered on "the secret." The secret to love, the secret to marriage. What's the secret? Our 23rd anniversary is coming up on Sunday so naturally, I wondered if there really is a secret.
There are lots of secrets in relationships. Marriages that look like perfection but are secretly miserable. Spouses that look like the epitome of devotion that are secretly cheating. Prosperous families that are secretly losing their homes. Smiling couples that secretly batter one another in private. Secrets abound in love.
It's also no secret that there are people who desperately want to be in love; that are searching for the secret to finding someone to love them. People who look around at others and wonder, how did they figure it out? What am I missing? And people who think that falling face first into a relationship will unlock the secret to eternal bliss.
So I've been thinking; what's the secret? Perhaps the secret is that there isn't one? In which case I guess it's more of a cosmic practical joke? One thing I have figured out is that there isn't a template for love. All of these self-help books and classes that are supposed to unlock the joys of eternal love are pretty much crap. Sorry. I say that as someone who has arrogantly thought that maybe I could teach someone the way we work and that might lead them toward our kind of happiness. But there really isn't a three step, or ten step, or 1,000 step program.
I do know step one. It's the universal step one actually. Jesus. You see, every step slightly off of God's plan makes it just a little harder to get it together. No, not impossible. Just harder. So there is my first and greatest blessing. I was raised by very strict (S-T-A-U-N-C-H) parents who didn't take boy/girl foolishness lightly. I couldn't date some guy from my high school that they didn't know. I couldn't hang out at some vaguely defined spot with less defined individuals. I wasn't allowed to telephone boys. For goodness sake, they read the signatures in my year book and grilled me on who every single person was and God help me if some twerpy little boy implied anything having to do with romance!
I never got the official "Pat & Hal Handbook of Daughterly Dating Rules." But having lived with them, I pretty knew the expectations. In fact, the first time a boy at church asked me to go out after evening service for pizza I said "No!" My mom asked me why I didn't want to go, I just assumed I wasn't allowed! The first boy I ever held hands with was sitting next to me in a church pew, the son of friends of my parents.
I cannot over-state the hedge of protection that placed around my future marriage. The potential suitors were a small group of boys who had gone to Sunday School with me and who addressed my parents as "Brother Harold" and "Sister Pat." If they didn't want to honor me, they would not dishonor my mom and dad; nor their own.
So when a seventeen year old boy who played bass in a gospel group at our church asked me out, I said yes. Yes because he met with my parents' standards. Yes because my heart sped up every time I saw him. Yes because he loved Jesus like I did. Yes because I knew he wouldn't take my hand and lead me away from God's plans. Yes because, and this is very very important; yes because I had not already attached myself to someone else. Those narrow standards left me available when my husband asked me if I wanted to go to the mall after school.
So there's the first secret; my parents. They prevented me from being distracted from the man God intended for me by keeping me focused on what was expected of me.
At 42, I'm not sure I ever said it. Thank you Brother Harold and Sister Pat for denying me too many choices and only entrusting me to a man of God.

Psalm 144:11-13 Rescue me and deliver me from the hand of foreigners, Whose mouth speaks lying words, And whose right hand is a right hand of falsehood, That our sons may be as plants grown up in their youth; That our daughters may be as pillars, Sculptured in palace style; That our barns may be full, Supplying all kinds of produce; That our sheep may bring forth thousands and ten thousands in our fields...

Pic: Us before church, 1983