Life in the Slow Lane

For years I avoided the thought of marriage because living it well seemed impossible for a person like me. I am a person easily overwhelmed by hardship, sorrow, suffering and evil. The only way I could be comfortable with the enormity of the life-long commitment to have and to hold, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, was to tuck my wedding day right up close to Easter as a reminder that God raises the dead, the hopeless, the sorrowing, the repentant.  Only in the stirrings of Palm Sunday and the triumphant "Hurrah!" of Easter could I imagine living the symbol meant to explain the mysterious wonder of Christ and His church.  Only in walking through the Holy Week and seeing Christ's ultimate life-giving death, could I begin to trust the strange thing that is marriage... the many deaths to self that somehow bring life.  I needed to start my marriage with the hope of Easter glimmering in the near future because...