The Mystery of Marriage

by Matty B. Duran (written in 2015)

I turned 50 this year, and I have never been married. But like everyone I had my own notions of what marriage was supposed to be. It has only been in the past few years after the Lord Jesus has healed me that I listened and heard The Holy Spirit reveal what marriage really is.

As a young girl, I dreamed love would be like Cinderella. In my case, I grew up watching The Sound of Music and Gigi. I wanted to see myself as Maria (Julie Andrews), finding her handsome Captain von Trapp, (Christopher Plummer). You always believe that love will come magically, just find you one day, and live happily ever after. I used to believe that the man I kissed would be the man I would marry.

As a child, I couldn't imagine anything more than true love's first kiss, the one kiss that opened the heart. I really believed that, and held onto that belief for many years. I believed one day someone would take care of me, "beautifully" like Gaston LaChailles (Louis Jourdan) wanted to take care of Gigi (Leslie Caron). Even though in the beginning Gaston was unwilling to take care of her honorably. The way their love unfolded was a romantic rush, a handsome older man to rescue the schoolgirl. I wanted the same fairy tale. The fairy tale of cinema love.

It was about a "look" and then marrying. The way Rhett Butler gave Scarlett O'hara those longing glances as he stared at her from the bottom of the staircase. This was my hard wiring about love and marriage.

Someday I believed an older man would discover his real feelings for me.

obliterating whatever boundaries stood in the way. He wouldn't care if he was a priest and I was a parishioner, if he was a professor and I was the student. I know a very stupid and naive notion. But when you are 20, it isn't incredulous, especially when a young woman needs to be rescued from herself.

This was it. This is what I learned, what I believed.

I was so naive. I grew up with these distorted fantasies. I came from a broken home, which probably nailed shut these ideas deeper into my heart than any movie ever could. Let me write when your parent's marriage doesn't make it, the soul is shattered the woman to be is already devastated. My parent's divorce, my parent's marriage forever re-defined true love and marriage for me. Marriage became a distortion of what God intended it to be. I viewed marriage as a desperate game of musical chairs, my parent's marriage, and the marriages I helped ruin. I had no excuse but a feeble dependence on sin to get my needs met.

When you see the two people you love most in the world clawing at each other through their actions and gnawing at each other with their tongues love becomes a sort of poison. When you see the man you love most in the world, hitting the woman you love most in the world real loves becomes skewed. Love becomes an illusion to test unfamiliar waters to defy what you have been taught as a child about marriage. But marriage wasn't modeled for me in a positive way. My mom always told me "Don't sleep with a man until you are married." The Ten Commandments read, "Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery." But these words are torn, these soul lessons cannot be learned inside a chaotic heart. Words become just that; words, and the words became words that I fought so hard to overcome.

When my parents ended their marriage after 17 years, marriage became an intangible, a groping for what was never learned. In my youth I didn't understand what a marriage was. When God brought Eve to her husband Adam, the profundity of the marriage union escaped me. When God said, "Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

(Genesis 2:24)

I didn't understand the cleaving that was supposed to take place. I didn't know that all others were to be forsaken. The one flesh was abstract thinking to me. What does that even mean? With all of the divorces and bickering in marriages, I thought the one flesh was optional, if it fit, if it suited, marriage became an uncertainty, a struggle, a suffering to a young child.

If screaming and hitting was cleaving I would accept it as part of the marriage package. Cleaving was accepting violence when it came, so if I had to cleave onto a husband's fist I guess I would have. My mom did. She suffered bruised eyes, cheeks, but more than that loving her husband shattered her womanhood. Marriage I thought was supposed to hurt, as my mother was literally bruised within her marriage.

I guess my parents tried to cleave but at 18 and 19, without Christ it was impossible. Immediately they were littered with five small children. There were bills, a mortgage, a second mortgage, a car payment, food, diapers, school clothes.......My mom and dad were unequipped for the herculean task of cleaving to one another.

I believe my parents loved each other, the best that teenagers could. They, to my knowledge were not believers at the time. We went to Catholic Church. My mom would dress her five children, pinch us during mass not to talk or even to breathe, tell my brother and me to go stand in the line near the confessional and confess our sins to the priest, which at the time consisted of talking back and fighting with each other. There was no substance to our faith. We were baptized in the Catholic faith. Marriage, especially in the 50's and 60's was something that went on, and should never end in divorce, no matter how miserable the marriage. It was a commitment enforced by the culture, not nurtured by Jesus. At the time, "Til death do us part" were words that meant, as long as a husband and wife could stand one another. There was no marriage counseling, and certainly the priest knew nothing of the violence at home. I used to resent the priest for that, for not helping.

We suffered the marriage alone in silence. My parents never studied the Bible. We didn't receive our first Bible until 1976, when Al Scudellari, the man who took us into his family's home, gave our family a Bible. We were homeless at the time living in Orange County in the city of La Habra. The marriage was going terribly. I write this; while growing up I felt partially responsible for their marriage. My father dragged my mom and us to live in L.A. It was a desperate vision on my father's part, moving a young wife and five young children to Los Angeles. He rented our home to my mother's sister and her family. We went in the 1974 brown impala to roam the freeways as vagrants.

My dad was always looking for success as an artist, having quit his job. It seemed quite mad in retrospect, but then, it was our life.

We took up residence in a Catholic school room, pitied by the priest of the parish there. The marriage, seemed to unhinge even further as my parent's fractured. The one was becoming pieces of two people who were too young when they got married.

 At 32, there was just a lot of baggage strewn all over the marriage. My brother and I, 12 and 11 respectively knew there were deep holes in our father's pockets. We knew they had leased the house, we knew we could not go back, there was no place to go. The days were marked by incessant fighting in the school room, and I was relieved when the priest told us we should go to summer school there, "El Scuelita."

Of course, we went to Mass every Sunday, frankly because we were living in the Catholic school next to the Catholic Church. Our evenings were not marked by prayer, or by Bible study. There was just a stench of failure. The real stench was the ending of my parent's marriage.

We returned to Fresno in the fall, actually to Sanger to live with my paternal grandparents. It was no secret that my grandmother never liked my mother. But we had no house to live in. My parent's marriage was like "Enquirer " News. There was no discretion, how could there be, when both parents were screaming "bloody murder" at the top of their lungs, disparaging each other's parents and each other. This always ended with my mom getting hit in the face, or her hair getting pulled or getting pushed to the ground or having something thrown at her.

It was a violent ending, but it was a violent dialogue. These were the memories being imprinted into our beings, violence, screaming and a shortage of money.

Shortly after my 17th birthday my parents were divorced, a family, the children become collateral damage. The wounds were a part of us. We were the narrative of divorce. My voice became internalized, as the breaking of my parent's body broke mine too. The cutting began that year. I grieved and my grief could not be consoled. The devastation fell everywhere.

When you are a child, no matter how miserable your parent's marriage may be, the thought, the notion that it may end one day takes you away from innocence into a very dark place. I had a broken moral compass.

I thought I believed in Jesus, but my faith was not really faith. It was just a religion, like the marble statues inside the cathedral could be broken, my faith was smashed. I had no notion of marriage. I would have entered a marriage, gladly at 18, not knowing what it was, just to be loved. I had no understanding of how a man should treat a woman. I accepted anything for the crumbs that may have fallen to me.

My mom had warned me not to have sex before I was married, but after her divorce she started to see a married man. By the time I was 23, I was involved in an affair with an older professor at the college. Mr. Valencia didn't ask me out. One afternoon we were talking in his office, as we had done for several months when suddenly he lunged at me and kissed my virgin mouth.

That was the beginning of the distortion of love for me. He was an older man, legally separated from his wife, I later learned he was engaged. For him, it was a sexual escapade, as for me I loved him. How could I know that he didn't love me? Movies taught me that the first kiss, however one's lips met, was supposed to be love. In those days, I didn't see my father anymore. The years following the divorce, he didn't really want to see any of us. It was a hard truth I had to accept.

There would be no marriage to this man of course. He was going to marry someone else. My virginity, my innocence, I gave to a man who told me he didn't love me after he had me. We lasted for 6 months when he grew tired of me. The last couple of weeks spending time with him became harder as he suddenly had no time for me. I couldn't imagine letting go. The only way to let go was not to be alive anymore. This was the position my young heart was in.

The oneness reserved for marriage had been spoiled. I was left to rot, or maybe there was no expression for the rending, so the razors served sufficient. I had no one to cleave to, my soul wanted to cleave to him, but he didn't want me. So, I moved on to the next man, another professor this time at State, and this time older. It happened more or less the same way, except I cleaved to a man who was not mine to cleave to. I knew he was married but I was a woman torn down the middle and I welcomed any bandage, however temporary. This time, he said he loved me, his actions were always leaving me to go home to his wife. I was worth considerably much less than a mistress.

I spent two years trying to pull myself out of this man. I was not married to him, but I needed to be. I was willing for him to leave his wife for me. I was willing for him to destroy his marriage vows and get a divorce for me.

But he didn't. I could not escape this roller coaster of sin. The web that sin had spun, had woven me intricately into its fabric. It would take a miracle to get me out. Having sex with a man, convinces a woman that she is in love with him. It is the cleaving that God intended for marriage. I didn't care that I was 25 and he was 58.

Jesus knew I knew nothing of marriage. He was patient and loving with me. As a Father, He had set loving boundaries for me that I had violated. He wanted me to know the truth about marriage. For years He wanted to reveal His design for men and women. He wanted me to trust Him. He wanted me to wait on His timing, so I could rejoice in a marriage relationship, but I wouldn't listen.

"You are worth more than what you let yourself become. " "You were not created to be a man's plaything." "You were created to be loved." "They did not have the privilege of uncovering you."

But, I was naked and torn for everyone to see, my body was cut from the grief of having no one to cleave to. The deception I embraced to be loved. The filthy lies the devil told me, I had believed. The many physical discussions I had with my body to convince myself that I wasn't being used again.

In 1992, I found Jesus for the real, and on December 27th I was baptized as a born-again Christian. I was in love. I loved Jesus, and I wanted to follow Him wherever He went. Still, I had this deep desire to be somebody's wife. I met Gary in church, and began dating him. I was starting to walk with Jesus and should have kept on the righteous path. I should have listened to the promptings of the Holy Spirit. I gave into this knowing I shouldn't have.

Two months later there was a plus on the pregnancy stick. I didn't even suggest marriage. If he wanted to marry me he would have proposed to me, or at least discussed marriage with me. But in my soul, I knew he wasn't going to marry me. This was going to be my first child, and I was left alone to raise her.

What did I expect? He left the church, and me. I had no father for this baby, his baby. I didn't have a husband to cleave to. In utter desperation I cleaved to Jesus. I read in Scripture that God, my God is a Father to the fatherless. I read that Jesus is a husband to the Church, a husband to those who had no one.

The years passed as I raised Emma, still there was no one. I had just about given up, I did give up. I met a hang glider while visiting my sister Monica and her family in Los Angeles. The relationship with Doug was a disaster. I began an affair with him, sinned against my God, my Jesus, and suffered the anguish that backsliders do. In a few short months it was over, like all the others. My childhood was still there, cluttering what God was teaching me about love and marriage. It was still there demonizing the present.

At the time, I had a friendship with another man, Pete, who was married; there was no sex but a single woman should not become good friends with a man who needed to cleave to his own wife. We called each other every day. I needed some kind of validation that I should have sought from Jesus. I was already in my 30's. I wasn't a child anymore, but the child buried deep inside still lied to me. Did I learn? Once again, I was listening to the wrong voice.

I had learning nothing, it was the grace and goodness of God that I was still here. If I had lived in the Old Testament I would have been stoned a few times over.

I decided to go back to school to finish my degree. Once again I became involved with a married professor there. Peter was the oldest man I had been with, but his age did not deter me. My siblings were all married, except for my baby sister who was 20 years younger. I was so desperate that I wanted to set up housekeeping with someone else's husband. Of course, it wasn't going to work. I had blinded myself to the implication of what this relationship really was, an adulterous relationship. I knew God would not bless it, and once again, I knew I should get out. In planning my escape, I told his minister that I had become involved with him. Then his wife called me. I apologized to her, but I did not agree to see her. There was the utter shame he belonged to her and not to me.

The truth has a way of making the soul sick. The Holy Spirit continued to speak truth to me. I had to crawl away from this wreckage. This wreckage, two sinful people caused. I crawled out of that only to crawl into a hole with a man I had once considered my best friend. This didn't last long, after I slept with him, we never called each other again.

When I was 40, my baby sister Mia got married. She asked me to be her maid of honor at her wedding. Mia was 20, her handsome groom Brandon was also 20. It was a dream come true, she met Brandon in cooking school. He proposed to her after only 6 months of dating, and I was ecstatic, as if this were my own wedding. I was always very protective of this marriage.

But my own marriage was never far out of my thoughts, I contemplated marriage to the therapist I was seeing, even though I was aware that a therapist could not become emotionally involved with a patient. But I needed it to be different this time. I clung to my old heart, I still truly believed that love could overcome any obstacles. Scott was only two years older and he wasn't married, so I believed he was going to be the the one I was to cleave to. Why did I believe there could be a relationship? I saw him twice a week, no one had ever seen me twice a week. He was available whenever I would call, it didn't matter if he was with another patient he would always pick up the phone to talk to me. It didn't matter if it was evening, or if he was out of town he always picked up that phone to talk to me. I knew that therapists don't pick up the phone for the most part, so I thought he cared about me. I believed he was the one. He had a sharp wit and was the funniest man I ever met, besides my late father. His silliness reminded me so much of my own dad's.

Everything that goes on in therapy, the pouring out of feelings, the banter, made it feel tangible. He asked me to feel the clumsy pacemaker under his skin. It was awkward, we had been close enough to kiss. I obsessed over him, misread things, and letting go of this insane notion of becoming his wife was nearly impossible. I wasn't going to take "no" for an answer. I guess the biggest reason was that I was already 40.

Every night I prayed that Scott would marry me. I guess I didn't realize that I was seeing a therapist in the first place because of my borderline personality disorder diagnosis. It was irrelevant at the time. My age seemed to make it more urgent. I had been alone for years and I believed God could do the impossible.

What made it familiar was that he was verbally abusive to me. There were sessions when he would literally crush my soul. Maybe I was just too sensitive because I loved him. Maybe it hurt my ego that even my baby sister was married. Whatever it was, I couldn't see myself not being married to him.

Two years later I quit my therapy when I saw a wedding band on his finger. I knew he had been spending time in the Philippines and the weekend he came back from one of those trips there was a shiny wedding band around his ring finger that assaulted me.

Pretending not to be devastated, I took a bravado approach, and took a cigarette out of my purse, as I smoked in those days. He gave me a scolding look as if to say, "If you light that cigarette we're done."

In my heart we were done. I had nothing left, so methodically I lit my cigarette. I watched him as he angrily stormed out of his office; my prayers were unanswered.

In 2009, loneliness beckoned me to repeat history. I got involved with Brouwer again, one of the professors I had had an affair with in my 20's. I had called him "Brouwer" even though that was his last name. I was never comfortable calling him Jim. By this time, he was much older. He wasn't married anymore.

We had kept in touch over the years. When I was pregnant, he advised me to have an abortion. I guess I wasn't surprised that it didn't work out this time. Not that I really believed it would. I hated sinning, even though he didn't think he was sinning. he went to a church, a church that accepted sin as a necessary part of living.

When I made the decision to stop seeing him it was hard. But we couldn't have made a life together. Maybe we never could have. When I was young, I used to believe that I wanted to be his wife. He had no real faith in Jesus. I hated sinning even when I would sin.

The years were really about Christ helping me deal with Emma and her bipolar diagnosis. There wasn't really any room for a man in our lives. I thank God now because He knew it would have never worked. She was so demanding at times, child-like, violent, angry. When she was young it was hard to get her to school. I had so many IEP's and psychiatry appointments for her, and trips to the COPE, a type of emergency room for mentally ill children.

My Heavenly Father was the one who gave me the strength through all of the break-ups to be strong for my child. He was the one who put all of my tears into a bottle. He was the one who provided for us as a Father and a Husband. He listened to me through the night watches, when I couldn't sleep, when all I had were tears and no words. It was He, The Holy Spirit who had the words for me, who made the prayers for me, who gave me the words when I had nothing but groans and sobs. It had been Jesus and only Jesus, who anchored me, who gave me covering, His robes of Righteousness. He put rings on my hands. He gave me a name. He gave me a place and He wouldn't let anyone rob me anymore. He was jealous for me, so much more than any of these men. Jesus healed me. The razors became obsolete. I found no more use for them. They did not belong on my body. My body is the temple of The Holy Spirit, and no one could have my body for free anymore.

For years God has been speaking to me in His still small voice, "Be holy, for I Am holy." (1 Peter 1:16) God has said in His word, "For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you should abstain from sexual immorality." (1 Thessalonians 4:3)

Marriage is more than I ever could have imagined. It isn't infatuation, adultery or fornication, they have no place in something so holy. In His Word, God says, "Marriage is honorable among all, and the bed undefiled; but fornicators and adulterers God will judge." (Hebrews 13:4)

The words are so powerful and have cut me over the years, as I did not honor marriage as holy.

Last month my baby sister Mia left her husband Brandon after nearly 10 years of marriage. The first time they were separated was a few years ago when they lost their apartment. I don't know why she left him, she won't tell me. In fact, she won't talk about it at all. But Brandon has always been a good husband. I can only make wild guesses as to why she left. They don't have a child, even though I know they both wanted a baby.

The first time she left him I was devastated. I prayed so hard, the news left me, numb. Their separation crushed me. She won't let me tell her, but I want to tell her, she has to go back. I would tell her she can't leave a marriage. Can you exit yourself? A marriage is something so much deeper than I ever believed. You are one flesh you are one person, in God's eyes. A divorce is one of the most painful things I could ever imagine. My parent's divorce mutilated me. Their separation is a wound to me, so I cannot even begin to conceive the anguish Brandon is enduring.

My parents were divorced, but they didn't have Jesus to lean on. I don't know if Mia is a believer. She was a Christian counselor in high school and was baptized at 18. She and Brandon were married by church, they made vows before God; she promised to love him until death do us part. I blame myself. I helped my mother raise her and I feel utterly ashamed that my girl would walk out on her marriage.

The years have changed what I now believe of marriage. Marriage is a sacred act, a man and a woman consecrated to God. Marriage is a covenant that cannot and must not be broken. If it is broken it is with the most dire of consequences. Lives are shattered and the people involved in the divorce never fully recover. Jesus has healed the scars of my parent's divorce.

I know that when my Heavenly Father created the marriage bond, He deeply connected the male and female souls involved in the union. I know that divorce deeply impacts the husband and wife; it deeply impacts the entire family, the children as well as other family members. When a marriage is in trouble there is suffering, and lives are never the same. Marriage is deeper than blood. Divorce is devastating, it is the spiritual death of the one flesh, of the husband and the wife, and the spiritual death of the family.

I hate when I hear divorced parents say they still love their children, real love involves real sacrifice, and mothers and fathers would really put their hearts under Christ's gentle yoke. Without Christ, what chance does a marriage have; when we are all so sinful? What chance does a family have without the Holy Spirit leading? Everything in this world attacks marriage and the family. Our Lord Jesus said, "Pray without ceasing, for your marriage, for your children. The devil is the god of this world and he is determined to separate and damage what God has joined together. He will use anyone to do this, I know, because he used me.

There is hope for a marriage to survive, and even thrive. Jesus died to give us this hope. Turn your marriages over to Jesus, He is Lord of all. Submit to our Lord, submit to each other. Wives, submit to your husbands, husbands cherish your wives. You share one vessel now. The Scripture says, "So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own body, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the Church.

"For we are members of His Body, of His flesh, and of His bones. "For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh." (Ephesians 5:28-31)

This is a profound mystery--but I am talking about Christ and the Church.

(Ephesians 5:32)

The real mystery of Marriage is Christ and the Church. Christ is our Bridegroom and we; The Church are His Bride. Marriage models this. When we get divorced, we are modeling separation from our Bridegroom Jesus Christ.

Marriage is forever in this life, and will be forever in the next life, with Christ as our Husband.

And when the Lord returns, we shall be with Him always.