Jodi Blazek ❤️ Joseph Gehr, August 17, 1985
A marriage is made of moments. When you string them all together, you get a picture of a life built together. A marriage isn’t made, once and for all, when the I-dos are exchanged. A marriage is constantly being recreated; it is always in the process of becoming.
A marriage goes through seasons: the spring of new life and hope, the summer of comfort and security, the autumn of changes and letting go, the winter of sadness and despair. A marriage will not survive without adapting to, enduring and celebrating the change of seasons. A marriage embraces all seasons.
I believe more each day that it is only in the stability of marriage, enduring the weather of every season, that one can reap the true benefits of a life lived together. Advice to young couples: Stick with it. Don’t give up. I promise, with effort, love, respect, and forgiveness, your marriage will endure and you will be so happy it did!
A marriage is made of moments.
Marriage includes the necessary and mundane—doing laundry, taking out the trash, paying bills, fixing, washing, mowing, checking things off the list of things to do, arguing about checking things off, thanking each other for checking things off.
After 34 years of marriage, Joe and I have so many “remember when” moments, the makings of great storytelling or one-liners that no one else understands but us. Funny, sad, silly, stupid, poignant, heartwarming, memorable moments. Moments we’d like to forget and moments we have to forgive. But, mostly, moments that have helped us become who we are.
A marriage is made of moments. Some of our earlier moments:
- Joe sending little gifts to me for several days before our wedding that said: “7 days til a lifetime” (6, 5, 4 and so on). Each day a new gift arrived.
- Working four jobs between us so I could finish college, sometimes with only enough time to exchange notes or take a break together at one of our shared part-time jobs at Montgomery Ward.
- Buying our first home and meeting our neighbors, Cece and Bob. Cece, who became a widow just six months later, became part of our family and a grandma to our daughter.
- Having our first baby and Joe announcing “You got your girl!”, when she was born…my secret hope.
- Experiencing the loss of two babies and the grief of infertility while creating a family of three with more love than we could imagine.
- Welcoming dogs (Ralph, Rosie, and Bailey) and cats (Peaches and Boots) into our little family…and missing their love and companionship when they passed on.
- Being parents to Jessica, from diapers and bottles, soccer games and DECA competitions to college internships and sorority activities.
A marriage is made of moments. Our life now:
- Being empty nest parents to Jessica, staying in touch with our daily Fam-bam texts. Everything from biking routes that Jessica and a friend took to pizza Joe and I made in a cast-iron skillet to a virtual shoulder to cry on during some rough patches. We are a family connected wherever we are.
- Visiting Jessica at her home in Washington DC and more recently in Madison, WI, letting her host us and be our tour guide. (Of course, we still pick up the check at all the restaurants she has been dying to visit.)
- Enjoying what still feels like our new home, getting into jammies the minute we get home from work, making dinner, yelling at the news (rather than at each other) and thanking God that we have grown together, sharing the same world view in very troubled times.
- Providing comfort, support and unconditional love for each other (and Jessica) during some very challenging and painful experiences this past year.
- Becoming more adventurous as empty nest parents: enjoying fun times with friends, day trips to nearby wineries, and taking a special trip to the Bridges of Madison County just the two of us.
This August 17, 2019, we get to share our anniversary date with Abby and Tony for their wedding day. Abby and Jessica started playing soccer together when they were five years old, and our families became lifelong friends. Jessica will be Abby’s maid of honor. We hope for Abby and Tony a marriage made of moments that last a lifetime.
Thirty-four years of marriage is a threading of memories, a string of moments that hold the seasons of life. After 34 years, marriage is about acceptance. We rest into acceptance of who the other is, rather than attempting to create the other into who we would like them to be. We enjoy each other with a lightheartedness that wasn’t possible in the newlywed years. Time is funny: it goes too fast, but it also unfolds so slowly that we don’t always see the transformation of the innocent into the mature, the immature into the confident. After 34 years, I know that this man is someone I can count on no matter what the season. I am so grateful for our marriage and our beautiful grown-up girl!
Happy 34th Anniversary to us!
A Marriage Made of Moments is a blog post I wrote for our 30th anniversary in 2015. For our 31-derful anniversary, I shared a revised post with updated photos, new “moments” and fresh reflections. Check them out too.
Being Benedictine 
August 16, 2019 at 1:17 pm
The Holy Eucharist – Seal of Christian Marriage
We know from church history that any special ritual of matrimony had not existed until the 9th century. The Sacrament of Matrimony was performed during the Eucharistic Liturgy. The newly-weds would partake of the Holy Gifts, which served as the seal of marriage (in Tertullian’s words). If for some reason the couple could not partake of the Lord’s chalice together, their marriage did not receive the blessing of the Church.
First references to a marriage ritual appear in the 4th century. St. John Chrysostom explains in his homilies that crowns symbolize the victory of Christians over their passions. We may assume from a letter by St. Theodore the Studite that the rite of matrimony was short and performed by a bishop or presbyter (priest) during the Holy Liturgy (St. Theodore the Studite, Letter 22: To Monk Symeon). Ancient euchologies of the same century contain the rite of matrimony, which was celebrated immediately after the eucharistic liturgy. How did matrimony get separated from the liturgy and become a separate sacrament?
Prior to that new law, marriage was registered directly by public administration, and marriage was governed by applicable Roman law. One could marry more than once and then get divorced, which was allowed by Roman law. The Church did punish that person with a penance, but his or her subsequent marriages were absolutely legal in the eyes of the State. Emperor Leo (in the 9th century) decided that from then on, marriage affairs were to be relegated to the Church, and that a marriage without a church blessing “would not be regarded as matrimony”. Instead, it was to be regarded as illegal concubinage. As the result of this reform, the Church was made responsible to the State for marriages and divorces. Following Leo’s novella, the line that separated civil marriage from church marriage began to blur. The Church was forced into blessing marriages it had not allowed before.
The Church sometimes had to seek compromises with the government. However, the sacred nature of the Eucharist was too important to be compromised. It was due to their fear of diminishing the greatest sacrament of the Church that the Fathers decided to separate the Holy Eucharist from the wedding ritual in the 10th century. Now the Church could stay on top of the new requirements while remaining true to its ancient principles and norms. If a priest had to bless a second or even a third marriage, he would perform a special wedding ritual, which excluded the crowns and contained penitential chants instead of laudatory ones. In the place of joint participation in the communion of the Body and Blood of Christ, the new couple received a cup of wine blessed by the priest. Those who married a second time were not allowed to partake of Holy Communion for several years, which allowed the Church to maintain penitential discipline. At the same time, it was clear to the Fathers of the Church that Christian marriage is intrinsically bound to the Church and therefore with the Eucharist. This is the reason why faithful who were marrying for the first time partook of the Holy Gifts during the sacrament of matrimony, thus becoming united to Christ and one another in Holy Communion.
This practice remained unchanged until the 15th century. The contemporary rite preserves numerous traces of its ancient Eucharistic roots. Thus, in the beginning of the sacrament of matrimony, the priest exclaims Blessed is the Kingdom… – the exclamation which opens up the Divine Liturgy. Before drinking the common cup of wine, the choir sings Our Father, which is another reference to the Holy Eucharist. According to the usual practice, the couple should confess and take communion before or after the wedding as to seal their marriage in the Holy Eucharist.
The sacrament of matrimony is one of the holy Mysteria (sacraments) in the Church; and as such it depends on the Holy Eucharist. Thus, husband and the wife are not only one body with one another but also members of the Body of Christ and the whole Church, effectively becoming a home church themselves; the husband representing Christ and the wife the Bride of Christ. Conscious participation in the life of the Church and mutual spiritual growth are the only ways to achieve the exalted ideal of a Christian marriage.
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