AFTER CANA

By Blake Sittler

A portrait of the perfect Christian married couple

What does the perfect Christian married couple look like?

They meet. They date. They kiss but hey don’t have sex.

After graduation from university, the boy asks the dad for his daughter’s hand and everything attached to the hand and all that that entails. The boy gets down on one knee and opens a velvet box. The girl says, “Oh, Blake, I’m the luckiest girl in the world!”

They are engaged!

They go to a marriage preparation class (willingly and joyfully!) and they don’t wear ball caps during the sessions. They call and reserve the church six months to a year in advance, depending on what is printed in the bulletin. They are married in the church that their grandparents built with the sweat of their pioneering brow.

They then have children who were born and conceived after the date of marriage.

They eat breakfast and supper together every day but only after they have prayed.

They volunteer in the community. They have movie night every Monday, Knights of Columbus on Tuesdays, CWL on Wednesdays, music on Thursdays, movie night on Fridays, hockey on Saturday and go to church every Sunday.

Their fridge is covered in children’s paintings held on by little humorous magnets. They are homeowners. They have a white picket fence.

Perfect. These people are neat, clean, simple.

Now . . .

Look up and down the streets of your parish. Look into the homes and hearts of the families that make up your Christian community.

What does the real Christian couple look like? In many homes you will find the parents are married — some happily, others not.

In some homes there is domestic violence. Others merely fight on a regular basis.

Many don’t love each other anymore and the only reason they stay together is because it would take too much energy to break up.

Some families live in two homes because the parents are separated.

Many are divorced.

In some homes there are children who are pregnant and considering abortion. Other children lay crying in their rooms because they want to tell their parents that they are gay but they don’t know what their parents’ reaction will be.

In some homes, money is tight. Both parents work outside the home and children feed themselves breakfast. They walk or bus to school leaving behind them an empty house.

In many homes there is a clock on every wall of the house but no time. In these homes, time is an enemy with shift work and too many things going on. When the parents get home, the kids have stories to tell and worries to share but they are too tired to listen just right this minute.

In some homes there are widows who mourn the loss of their spouse but who have no one to talk to because everyone in their family has told them, “Aren’t you over that yet? You should get out and meet someone new. He’s been dead — what — a year already?”

The windows of some homes flicker blue in the night. If we were to compare the number of hours Christian husbands spend online looking at pornography and compared it to non-Christian men, I’m afraid, if there is a statistical difference, it wouldn’t be much of one.

In some homes there are couples who have been living together for a few years but are now discerning the call to get married but when they visit the parish they feel judged and reluctantly ministered to because they had children out of wedlock — children that God blessed them with.

These, in the words of the famous Sesame Street song, are the people in your neighbourhood — in your neighbourhood and in your parish neighbourhood.

I do not mean to sound facetious about the hypothetical “perfect Christian married couple.” Several of them probably exist.

God gives us all the capacity for perfection; we simply choose early on to deviate from the easiest path. And it is on that path where we live out our married life.

God is with us on our path, in our marriage and in our spouse. We should not focus on how imperfect we are but focus instead on how to be a better companion for those with whom we travel.

Sittler and his wife Brooke have three children. He is the acting director of Pastoral Services for the Diocese of Saskatoon and sits on the Marriage Task Force and the Retrouvaille board of directors. He welcomes feedback at aftercana@sasktel.net