
On the day Annalise got married, I was exactly like Marlin, Nemo’s dad from the eponymous Disney movie. I started off as trepidacious (sic) as a tropical fish getting ready to plunge into the Eastern Australian Current. But once caught up in the flow of that day, “Dude!”, I transformed into an acrobatic sea-turtle-surfer dad savoring every minute of that ride!
Speaking of savoring, last night marked Matt and Annalise’s Paper Anniversary. They marked the occasion with a night out in their adopted hometown of Houston. For our part, Lisa and I watched their wedding video at the kitchen table. Stepping back into the Eastern Australian current caused my full heart to spill over again, blurring those year-old iconic images. Of course, there was the stuff that would cause even the most Stoic, John Wayne dad to blubber: the walk down the aisle; the cosmos-changing vows; the words of a priest-poet who’s known Annalise her whole life; and quite frankly, amazing sung and spoken prayer! Then there was the part that surprised me. During that viewing, two huge questions were authoritatively answered once and for all. The first one was asked of me,the second by me; the first one, thirty-one years ago, the second, seven years ago. For the purposes of a readable, shortened article, I will take up the second, younger question this week, and return on another day for the treatment of the other question.
The Answer to a Seven-Year-Old Question
About a year into their relationship, it became clear that Matt wasn’t showing any sign of going anywhere. That’s when I decided to engage in “The Talk” with him. My kids had seen this kind of thing before with one or two other swains. So when I asked Matt if he could “help me with something in the other room,” all eyes around the table widened to the size of dinner plates. More or less, this was my seven-years-ago question for Matt:
“Someday, if you’re lucky enough to have a daughter as amazing as mine, you’ll want someone with her who understands how special she is. You’ll want him to treat her that way…like she’s sacred. You think you can do that?”
Matt’s answer at the time was more than acceptable, but years later, his wedding video captured the final, authoritative answer. In his award winning book, Blink (2005), Malcolm Gladwell described how some microscopic events have the power to reveal the essence of the whole macrocosm in a microcosmic second. That’s exactly what I saw on the video. It all showed up in one glowing instant. Unselfconsciously a look swept over Matt’s face as he caught sight of my daughter walking her way up the main aisle of the wedding chapel. I recognized it as the same look that came over my face when I baptized her with my tears the very first time I laid eyes on her twenty-seven years before, in a Labor and Delivery Room just after her birth. You can’t fake that. I now know that he really knows what I meant back in the day. Seven years later, I’m confident that my daughter’s boyfriend, turned husband, knows how to reverence the presence of the sacred in my little girl turned woman.
Dialogue
Can you think of a time in your life where a microscopic moment told you everything you needed to know about the essence of a person or a situation?
Can you think of a time, where in retrospect, you can clearly see that you experienced an all-revealing moment like that, but you ignored it to your detriment? How will you ensure that you don’t relive a mistake like that again?
In my work with people seeking a spouse, I always recommend that they construct a rank-ordered list of the things they want to find in a partner. I ask them to consider the top five items “The Deal-Breakers.” In other words, if the spouse candidate doesn’t show evidence of possessing these, by all means, discontinue the relationship. Furthermore, before any kind of snogging behavior commences, be sure that you have completed this analysis to your satisfaction. If you lead in with the physical first, it’s easy to fall in love, which has a way of covering over a sour core with a confusing layer of sweet. If you or someone you love is in the market for a honey, have you or they constructed such a list?
Perhaps even more importantly, to get a spouse as cool as Matt, or Annalise, it’s important that you foster and maintain deep, warm hearted, and honest relationships with friends and family. You want honest and direct feedback about how your people view your spousal candidates. The primary criterion upon which your discernment should turn is whether or not your sweetheart makes you more like who you really are, or if they mute important parts of you. Only an intimate friend or family member can tell you that. A friend who tells you for the very first time, after a breakup that “I never really liked them” is probably not a very good friend. Whether or not you are out in the dating world, do you have friends like this? If not, is there anyone in your life who would be a candidate for deepening into a friendship like this?
Who is it that you can count on to tell you the truth? Are you good at non-defensively receiving feedback from someone who loves you? If not, would you know how to improve?