He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not

by Trish Ryan

  “We have come together in the presence of God to witness and bless the joining together of this man and this woman in marriage,” Brian announced, beginning the ceremony. “The bond and covenant of marriage was established by God in creation. It signifies to us the mystery of the union between Christ and his church, and Holy Scripture commands it to be honored among all people.”

  Steve reached for my hand, as he did whenever we stood together, and it felt like the most normal thing in the world to be up in front of our family and friends in our finest attire, declaring our love for God and each other to the world. It was like a party, a celebration that things had finally turned out right.

  “The union of husband and wife in heart, body, and mind,” Brian continued, “is intended by God for their mutual joy, for the help and comfort given one another in prosperity and adversity, for partnership in God’s redemptive purposes in the world, and when it is God’s will, for the procreation of children and their nurture in the knowledge and love of the Lord.”

  I hung on these words, savoring them. There it is, I thought. This is what I’ve always wanted. The traditional Anglican teaching encapsulated why I’d longed for marriage—the mutual joy, help and comfort, partnership and connection, and family that only God can make possible. I squeezed Steve’s hand, not wanting to miss a moment of this ceremony. All those years I chased the sacred, I thought. Now, here, this is it.

  “Steven,” Brian asked, “will you take Patricia to be your wife—”

  “I will!” Steve blurted. We burst out laughing. My heart swelled with the realization that not only did Steve want me as his wife, he was jumping ahead to make it happen.

  “Hold on,” Brian said, grinning, “let me spell out all you’re agreeing to. Steven, will you take Patricia to be your wife, to live together in the covenant of marriage as the Lord your God commands, will you love and honor her, lay down your life for her, comfort and encourage her, and, forsaking all others, be faithful to her as long as you both shall live?”

  “I will,” Steve repeated firmly, giving my hand a squeeze. I looked at his shining eyes, amazed that we’d finally reached this moment. I wanted to shout, Me too! but I waited for Brian to continue.

  “Patricia,” Brian asked, “will you take Steven to be your husband, to live together in the covenant of marriage as the Lord your God commands, will you love and honor him, lay down your life for him, comfort and encourage him, and, forsaking all others, be faithful to him as long as you both shall live?”

  “I will,” I promised, lost in Steve’s big green eyes.

  Our parents agreed to receive us into each other’s family and recognize us as a family in our own right, and the congregation agreed to do everything in its power to help us keep the promises we made. Then Brian gave a wonderful sermon about love and marriage, most of which I missed because I kept sneaking glances at Steve and thinking, This is it! This is my wedding! I was jolted back to attention when Brian announced that it was time for us to exchange our vows. He started with Steve, instructing him to repeat the vows we’d discussed in our class, the ones God would use to link us together:

  “With God’s help, I, Steven, take you, Trish, to be my wife.” I stared at him in awe, afraid I might actually swoon, like a character in a nineteenth-century British novel. “To love you as Christ loved the church,” Steve continued. “To submit to you and lay down my life for you. To have and to hold and, forsaking all others, be faithful to you. To comfort and encourage you. To honor you and communicate with you. To forgive and seek forgiveness. To cherish and delight in you in all circumstances. To strive toward the potential God has placed in me, and to encourage you to strive toward the potential God has placed in you. And to follow Jesus and encourage you to follow with me as long as we both shall live.” I exhaled as he finished, only peripherally aware that I’d been holding my breath.

  “With God’s help,” I responded, repeating Brian’s cues, “I, Patricia, take you, Steven, to be my husband.” My husband! I thought, a childish wave of glee sweeping through me. “To respect you and submit to you as to Christ,” I continued, knowing deep down inside that the words I spoke were the absolute truth. I wasn’t going through the motions; I wasn’t saying vows because of the beauty of following tradition. I meant these vows—every word. “To love you and lay down my life for you. To have and to hold and, forsaking all others, be faithful to you. To comfort and encourage you. To honor you and communicate with you. To forgive and seek forgiveness. To cherish and delight in you in all circumstances. To strive toward the potential God has placed in me, and to encourage you to strive toward the potential God has placed in you. And to follow Jesus and encourage you to follow with me as long as we both shall live.”

  We exchanged rings. Contrary to all the bridal lore I’d heard about puffy stressed-out wedding fingers, these outward symbols of our inward covenant fit perfectly, and I twisted the thin band of platinum with my thumb—just as I’d seen Paul and Pascha do when they were newlyweds and I first came to their small group, all those months before.

  “Now,” Brian pronounced with a smile, pulling me from my reverie, “I declare you husband and wife. Steve, you may kiss your bride.” Steve took my face in his hands as he kissed me, the clapping and cheers of our family resounding in the background.

  He loves me, I realized, and this time I knew for sure. It was just as the Bible promised—exceedingly, abundantly, above all I could ask or imagine.

  PART IV

  Happily Ever After

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Learning to Roast a Chicken

  My sister and I had a longish conversation the other day about the best way to roast a chicken—it felt like a bit of a miracle. I’d never roasted anything; my life was always more of the “grab a bologna sandwich” variety. But now that’s changed. I’m married. Happily married, that is. I cook chicken for my husband, which means I have a husband to cook for. To me, that simple fact is proof that God is real, that He acts in our lives today and follows through on His promises.

  Steve and I faced some transitions in our first days of marriage, to be sure. After months of staying vertical and monitoring our kisses for heavy breathing, waking up in bed next to my new husband each morning took a bit of getting used to. As did his strange conviction that green beans and granola bars don’t constitute a full dinner. We learned a lot that first year: We discovered that when you combine a man who is effortlessly punctual with a woman who is chronically early, you somehow end up with a couple who is ten to fifteen minutes late everywhere they go. We learned that sometimes you don’t know you’re “in the mood” for something until you say Sure, why not? and go for it. We learned that the freshman fifteen is nothing compared to the newlywed ninety (I think I started to gain weight the minute we said, “I do,” as if my body relaxed and stopped feeding off of itself for the first time since I was fourteen). We learned that when those feelings of indignation, irritation, and frustration well up inside us until it feels like the walls are closing in, the best thing to do isn’t to “communicate,” but rather to pray. As it turns out, God has a whole arsenal of win-win solutions up His sleeve that far surpass anything we come up with on our own, so we’ve learned to avail ourselves of Him on a regular basis. And we learned to say to one another, at the slightest hint of hurt or offense or miscommunication, “I’m sorry—will you forgive me?” and to respond in the affirmative, forgiving one another, whether we feel like it in that particular moment or not. In short, we learned the things that give legs to our vows to love, honor, and cherish one another, discovering what it means to live as this new creation, this one God promises married couples in the Bible.

  There have also been spiritual transitions, as I learned the things that give legs to my vow to follow Jesus. Being part of the family of God is like being part of any other family, I discovered—sometimes you love the people you’re with, sometimes they drive you nuts. More than once I resolved, like a child frustrated by some perceived i
njustice or slight, to pack up my toys and run away. But I never got farther than the corner before the big, wide world seemed like an awfully lonely place, forcing me to admit how much I missed my church family. Jesus described himself as a shepherd, rescuing lost sheep and keeping the flock safe and close together; in my case, at least, he’s had his work cut out for him. My friends at the Vineyard—Dave and Grace, Paul and Pascha, Amy, Will, Gwen (the list goes on)—moved heaven and earth to create a place for me to figure out my relationship with Jesus, showing graciousness beyond anything I could have dreamed of. They gave me roots, and that feels good.

  I ONCE HEARD a talk by a man named Carl, who described typical Christian evangelism as a bunch of self-righteous people standing in a tight circle around Jesus, with a huge wall around them separating them from the outside world. The goal in such circles, he explained, is to pull as many people as possible over the wall and into the circle by whatever means necessary, thereby rescuing them from the certain destruction (read: hellfire and brimstone) threatening them on the outside. He called this a “bounded sets” approach, where everyone is defined by being either in or out. He wasn’t, it seemed, a big fan of this approach.

  “What if,” he posited, “the important thing isn’t whether you are in or out, so much as which way you’re facing?” He described an alternative, an “unbounded sets” approach, which keeps Jesus right in the center. Carl drew dots to represent Jesus’ followers, still free to edge up as close to him as they want to be. The rest of the world, however—the faraway dots who don’t believe in Jesus or don’t like him or have given him no thought at all—can, at whatever point they choose, turn to face him to find out what he might be about. There’s no wall to climb, no secret password to learn, no “in” or “out” or “us” or “them.” Just a standing invitation to turn to face Jesus, and to walk toward him at whatever pace you’re called.

  This picture stays with me, a perfect description of my slow turn and recalcitrant stroll toward Jesus (then away from Jesus, then off on some wild tangent, then back toward him again). In all my frantic circling, trying to go every direction at once, Jesus was there—I could approach him from wherever I was, however I was; he was always on call. This is, I think, a nice quality in a savior. But I was never pulled over any wall; I never got it “right.” All I did was say yes when Jesus offered to help me find a way out of my chaos.

  Here’s a confession: even at the height of my expansive spiritual exploration, it always seemed wrong to me, this idea that we define God—that it’s up to us to decide who God is and what God likes and dislikes, and he/she/it will be fine with whatever we come up with. I didn’t see how it could work this way, as nice as the idea might sound. Honestly, if—as you saw—I couldn’t pick a decent man without divine intervention, what on earth made me think I had any business trying to design my own god? The more I struggled to embrace it, the closer I came to the reality that I hated the idea of an amorphous, standardless, undefined deity watching me flounder about and loving me anyway. From this viewpoint, it was all up to me, and God would be fine with however things turned out. The problem was that I wouldn’t have been fine if my life had continued on its set trajectory for the next thirty, forty, or even fifty years. I needed a God who gave a damn about what I did; a God who was willing and able to help, who would kick my butt back on track whenever I wandered off again following my own broken compass.

  So now, when I say God, it’s a little awkward, because I have to choose: should I be honest, or politically correct? As author Ravi Zacharias aptly puts it, “We are living in a time when sensitivities are at the surface . . . Philosophically, you can believe anything, so long as you do not claim it to be true. Morally, you can practice anything, so long as you do not claim that it is a ‘better’ way. Religiously, you can hold to anything, so long as you do not bring Jesus Christ into it.” Well, I guess I’ve blown that. Sharing my story would be so much easier if I’d found true love through transcendental meditation, eating kale and mangoes, or even a super-special lip gloss—if my narrative were hipper somehow, or edgier, or at least politically correct. But that’s not how it happened.

  Here’s the honest version: Now, when I say God, it’s not a “pick your own definition” kind of thing. I don’t mean Buddha, or Allah, or the channeled spirit of Gandhi, or whatever feels right in the moment. I’m not referring to universal energy, or chi running up and down my charkas, or even (especially) some personal capacity for greatness I inherited as a citizen of humanity. I tried all those gods, along with the gods of money, cute outfits, and having the flattest stomach on the beach. Not to mention my ongoing quest to worship Mr. Right, no matter how not-right he might be. But like Baal in the Old Testament, when these gods were put to the test by the fiery trials of my real life, none of them had any power. They either vanished, or just sort of sat there and burned, staring back at me expressionless, as if to say, “What did you expect?”

  I’m not sorry that I tried all those gods, but that doesn’t change the bottom line: for all my searching for the spiritual truth that would allow me to live the life I dreamed of, none of these “truths” ever worked. Despite the heart-felt beliefs and endless good intentions, those paths offered promises but no answers, hope but no results. But after I’d spent almost a decade reaching and falling, reaching and falling, Jesus caught me. He gave me answers, and results. In three years, Jesus exorcized my demons, healed my wounds, unloaded my baggage, and restored my hope. He also gave me a new marriage, a new career, a new self, and a new life. Not a patched-together compilation of the best I could come up with on my own, but something better than I could have imagined.

  My true fairy tale ending? Seeing the truth of God’s promise in King Solomon’s wise words: “A chord of three strands is not easily broken.” I love this picture of how God weaves a man and a woman together; it’s so much better than the other options I explored about formless frames and uncommitted commitments. Nicole Nordeman, the songwriter who saved my early faith by admitting that she too had doubts, captured this new feeling of hope I have in a song she wrote for a friend of hers who thinks all this Jesus stuff is nuts: “But what if it’s true?” she asks.

  That’s the question that changed everything for me. What if it’s true? Now, I don’t have to pick the petals off of any more flowers, looking for some sort of hope. The answer, is, He loves me.

  Acknowledgments

  I knew that the hardest part of writing this book would be finding words to tell my family and friends how grateful I am to have them in my life. Still though, it’s nice to have a chance to try . . .

  Mom and Dad: Thank you for showing me how to love, how to laugh really hard at myself, and how to be part of a family that takes care of each other. And thank you for swooping in to catch me time and time again when most people would have agreed that a good fall might do me some good. If it wasn’t for you standing by my side for all these years, I can’t imagine where I’d be. Thank God I don’t have to.

  Meg: Thank you for being my best friend—for challenging me, making me laugh, understanding all the things no one else knows, and showing me options in life I might not have considered. I’m grateful for every vote of confidence.

  Chris and Eric: Neither one of you suspects, I’d guess, how your words of encouragement have gotten me over rough patches in the past, or how proud I am of how you live your lives today. Thank you.

  The new family I inherited when I became Steve’s wife—Mom and Dad Conway, Lisa, James: Thank you for welcoming me with open arms and so much love, not to mention great recipes and political analysis. I’m amazed to be blessed with a second family, and another group of people to call home.

  Kristen Fincken Mahan: Thank you for giving me a place to run away to and the space I needed to heal. Thanks for being the one who knows the whole backstory, and loves me anyway.

  Everyone at The Vineyard Christian Fellowship of Greater Boston: Thank you for the bagels, the coffee, the music, the prayer, the en
couragement, and the love. Thanks for proclaiming, boldly and without embarrassment, that Jesus empowers Impossibly Great Lives, and for sticking by me when it all just felt impossible. Dave and Grace Schmelzer—Steve and I are so grateful for your friendship, leadership, wisdom, and love . . . it’s a fun honor to count you as friends and to dream big dreams with you about what might be possible in life. Brian Housman—thank you for your wise counsel, your great sense of humor, and for being there when God knit Steve and I together into one. Chuck and Marianne Snekvik—thanks for showing us what a fun, sexy, Jesus-ey marriage looks like after a few decades. What an inspiration! Christopher Greco, Jordan Seng, Eunice Sim—thanks for writing the songs that drew me toward Jesus. Paul and Pascha Griffiths, Christine Raymond, David Wilmouth, Gwen Bruno, and Chelsea Vessenes—thank you for helping me recalibrate my spiritual compass toward Jesus; I don’t think I would have made it to happily ever after without you. Dominic and Kristina Kaiser, Chris and Aimee Radom, Jill Tonelli, Liz Boschee, Bryan and Lisa Graves, Lynette Estes, Emily and Gavin Long, and everyone from SEEK and all the small groups I’ve been part of—thank you for your friendship, your prayers, the laughs we’ve shared and hopes we’re still holding up, wondering what God will do next.

  On the technical side, pulling this book together was a lot like the process Oprah Winfrey described when she talked about posing for the cover of Vogue: it took an army of talented people to turn my duckling of a manuscript into a swan.