Three-Strandedness

I’m so glad J answered the door this afternoon— so glad because even from the kitchen, my eyes were welling up from the overflow.
I can hear the neighbor laugh light and free and sweet.
And then the front door shut.
And the minivan pulled out and away past the swaying rows of beans.

Thankfully, I was able to blink back the awe by the time J sat back down to our post-church brunch and handed me the surprisingly large bill.

“Its for our anniversary date,” J explained. “She overheard that we were going into town to celebrate tomorrow afternoon, and she wanted to make sure we spared no expensive. Isn’t that amazing?”

No expense. For a ragtag kind of love like ours.
Such an act of love had Gospel-grace oozing from every angle.

Lost for words, we tucked the cash away, more than we have ever spent on any date, and I remember the truth of Great, Forever Loves: A cord of three strands is not easily broken.

A cord artistically intertwined holds up to the weight of this life and carries us into Eternal Love.
Cords marked by their three-strandedness.

Pondering this kind of knitted life, I cap the salsa and follow the toddlers to their room for our much-needed Sunday naps. But before we reach the hallway, I eye the picture of the golden-haired visitors and the open table there on the white, stone wall. The Rubliev icon hangs in the center of our little, 150 year old parsonage, and it echoes back to me the melody of the Divine Triad: love in community, love as communion. It shows me the cord.

Here is an image from Genesis: three angels— the Divine God-head— welcomed in and served by flesh-and-time mortals— humans who doubted and laughed and eventually received the promise of a miracle. The giving of bread in the desert; the giving of long-awaited, miraculous life.
Likewise in this icon, there is an offering of space for us, too: the table is open to the viewer as a call to join the Divine. And so it is the heavenly way of things when those receiving hospitality become the hosts, and the those serving also pull up a seat at the table.
And we all break bread, serving and receiving and taking love in.
A communion bread kneaded from flour and yeast and water— three distinct agents, persons— pressed into consecrated nourishment for the world.
This kind of life weaved together holds tight.

The Rubilev carries the melody of Solomon’s three-stranded cord, the parsonage vibrating with it.

After the kids are tucked in, I make a cup of coffee and wonder if this same song can be heard in our marriages, too. The very essence of our life together seems to be this familiar pulse, like a heartbeat: the God-head, the community, and the couple— partners now joined as one flesh. Three entities loving and giving and receiving and sacrificing.

And it is here that we are made whole, within this communion:
A trinity of family, Divine, and outsider all together.
Us, them, and God.
This is the symphony of wholeness.

And so I’m reminded that those called into the sacrament and vocation of marriage must remember its essential three-strandedness.

And we have to remember because, more often than not, we have unraveled this sacred cord. We have reduced the music to a duet of sorts, maybe a solo act. And those of us who have tried to build a home with all-too-small love, without the care and presence of the community, have fallen flat and exhausted and without the breath Divine Life. We almost don’t make it.

I consider our first few years and wince from the pain of its weakness.
The ache of loneliness that throbs in a shared bed.
The misunderstanding that lingers amongst the coffee and toast at the breakfast table.
The silence that feels as if it should be filled with some joyous note, but is left empty.

Because lacking cords means lacking chords.
Missing members in our love means a silent love song.
And how does one dance outside of the song of Love?

A few weeks ago, I heard Esther Perel share about this condition within many modern marriages. She explains that for the first time in human history, we have turned the couple into the sole, basic unit of our existence, often isolated or elevated above any other relationships. People tend to believe that the happiness of the couple determines the survival of the family, but it was not always that way:

The marriage lived in the center; it was one central relationship, but it lived in the midst of an aggregation of other intimate, powerful connections with their own sense of duty, obligation, et cetera… But yes, it’s really — “I want — with my partner, I want a best friend, and I want someone who is intellectually stimulating and emotionally available and sexually compatible. And I want all of that with one person, and if I have to go somewhere else, I experience it as a flaw in the relationship.” And I think that’s a tremendous pressure.

We were intended to love one another with each other.
Without the other— the outsider, the community— the weight of our essential need for love will crush us.
Our home will collapse from the inside.

A close friend texts and tells me that another divorce is final. Five kids left despondent due to anemic love: two-stranded, just us-and-Jesus love. Love that snaps under the tension of this life, one that cannot possibly hold the complexities of the human heart.
And I sigh heavy: Our home will collapse from the inside.

Yet we hear this historic diversion preached from many a pulpit and see this isolation begin at many a wedding where couples braid twine or fabric into a supposed three-stranded cord there at the altar, intertwining and weaving a new life constructed of me, my spouse, and my God.
Us three.
And somehow, we’ve removed the “them.”
We have privatized— long before the picket fences and baby carriages and closed doors.
And so the couple’s first act of togetherness is a swift turn inward, vowing a love that cycles between three individuals rather than three entities.

And what to make of the crowd of witnesses watching such a wedding demonstration? Are those gathered in the pews simply there to dab mascara and take blurry pictures with oversized iPads? Are these friends and family lifeless bystanders, or is there a misidentified strand in the cord?

Could it be that we have neglected the mysterious unity of flesh between the couple? Two persons now one home, one flesh, one strand within the braid?
Could it be that we have removed the couple from the community, even form the church, lifting them up on some pedestal? As if they’ve arrived in a way that our single brothers and sisters have not?
Could it be that our marriages have become as individualized as our faith, somehow believing that our homes and families will survive on the care of you, me, and our non-trinitarian God?

It is possible.
I’ve all to often felt the missing chord from our own home at times, a missing cord from our sacred weaving.

And yet, there is healing in the gentle call back to “them”: to the other, to those outside willing to be let in. To our neighbors and church communities and friends and family. Even moreso, to the intrinsic call of children, too, welcoming them as guests to love and be loved. Our marriages need more than what two loves can possibly give.

As if on cue, O. wanders out to me after another failed attempt at napping, and we sit quiet thinking about whatever things a mom and her gal muse about on hot, humid Sunday afternoons.

The silence brings me back to the laughter of our dear neighbor at the front door— the joy of loving and giving freely to one another as an overflow of our worship.
And then our oldest, too, sitting here beside me as an overflow of love between J and I.
And this wiggling baby inside, another strand of communion.
And, most wonderfully, the Divine Belonging we all enter into together, as the Holy Trinity welcomes us into their Great Love. And we give and receive love together forever.

And so it is here, within us and them and the other, that we find a love strong enough, woven true enough, to find wholeness.