My daughter Laura is 24 but she still calls me Daddy now and then. I like that. She knows it.
I also like that I was the first man in her life but that role has been slipping since she met Michael a few years ago at college. Two days from now, that slippage will be complete when I walk Laura down an aisle and hand her off to Michael to officially become her main man.
As I think about their wedding, my heart is both heavy and light. Heavy because it all seemed to happen so fast. But also light because she found a man we’ve grown to love and who clearly loves her. Best of all, both are committed to Christ.
But the “so fast” part is still sobering. I recall how slow the younger years meandered along but then middle school and high school flashed by. She graduated from high school and headed off to Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. We let her go with a little trepidation but also with the assurance that we’d have summers with her during her college years.
Except she never came home again. Work and internships kept her in Grand Rapids during the college summers. Before we knew it, she graduated from Calvin College and started job hunting. So much for the college years.
She applied herself to job-hunting during summer and autumn after graduation. I was job-hunting as well then. I have a fond memory of Laura attending a career-search meeting with me at a local church. The leader asked us to introduce ourselves by sharing our greatest job-search challenge. Everyone there but Laura was a 50-something so you can imagine the response when Laura shared that “All of you are my greatest challenge! I’m losing my entry level jobs to experienced people like you!”
Well they loved her answer. She was a breath of fresh air and candor to all the rest of us wearied job hunters that night. Her comment stated the obviousness of a lousy time for everyone looking for a job in the faltering U.S. economy of then – that even the jobs that were landed were out of sync with how things should be.
Laura has always been like that. She relates well to young and old alike and somehow manages to pull off being both bluntly direct and sweetly endearing all in one petite package that you would do well not to underestimate.
Perhaps those qualifies helped her beat the terrible job-hunting odds of the day. She landed a desirable, well-paying job in her target city within seven months of graduating.
Not long after settling into her new position, life, apartment, and car, her boyfriend become her fiance. Two days from now, he will become her husband. My little girl is a woman and soon to be a wife.
I’m thrilled that she and Michael decided to hold out for marriage to be together. Marriage was instituted by God in the second chapter of Genesis, the Bible’s first book.
Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh. (Genesis 2:24, RSV)
I find it interesting that while our marriage ceremony involves a father giving his daughter a way, the Biblical account has the groom doing all the doing – first leaving, than cleaving. The bride’s actions aren’t specifically stated but she clearly receives both the man’s leaving – to become a new family with him – and the cleaving – to become one with him.
While our world heralds a man’s strength, the Bible seems to set marriage up with the man subjugating his strength to his bride as an act of obedience to God. It takes resolve for a man to properly sever ties with parents and set up a new family with his wife. But the one flesh part is also an act of strength that involves restraining his strength to relate with his wife.
His first submission is spelled out but the second, featuring a union of flesh, is more subtle but no less profound. So, I hear you asking, how does this union subjugate a man’s strength? Think about it in terms of what satisfies both participants. Is intimacy best tender and yielding or savage and forced?
As I see my daughter signing on for all of this, my joy is full regarding the man she chose and how she and Michael engaged us parents in their evolving relationship. Michael asked my permission to date Laura when they decided to move their relationship beyond the friendship level. And when they engaged, they came again to seek our guidance.
I will formally give Laura away two days from now. However, I’m not so much giving her away as I am walking alongside her in support of her receiving Michael submitting his strength to her to establish the framework for becoming One together.
I love how Laura and Michael chose to frame their marriage with this powerful Oneness analogy. She works as a computer programmer and they created a website for their wedding: http://equalsone-wedding.com. If you click on this link today, you’ll read this text in the middle of the home page:
1 plus 1 Equals One on August 10
With her “Daddy’s” blessing!!!.
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Notes:
This blog that is a voice of Christians for gender equality that offers an interesting discourse about the husband leaving father and mother to marry: http://blog.cbeinternational.org/2006/07/leaving-father-and-mother/
Here’s another post about 5 ways for a man to leave his parents: http://31kings.com/5-ways-for-a-man-to-leave-his-father-and-mother/