Guest column
by Jordyn Grasz, Member of Holy Family Parish in Palisade
Five years ago, I had my first column published as a wife. The weekend my husband and I went on a honeymoon, the Gospel reading at Mass was about how Jesus calls us to hate our spouses. It was a little too fitting where we spent our honeymoon cheering for rival football teams at the Colorado-Nebraska football game.
Of course, we know Jesus doesn’t actually want us to hate our spouses – but he does want us to love Him more than we love anyone or anything else, and through our love of Christ, we will be better able to love others around us.
Now, as we are preparing to celebrate our five-year anniversary, it turns out I still have some learning and growing to do as a wife. (Peep the sarcasm, obviously I know there’s always going to be learning and growing.)
I have been reading through the Catechism in a Year with Father Mike Schmitz’s podcast this year, and we just recently finished the section on the sacrament of marriage. Something I have heard multiple times in my nearly three decades of being Catholic, but what just hit a little differently with this reading was the verse from the Gospel of Mark, “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh,” (10:7-8).
I have often heard that verse and thought of children – the two come together as married couple and conceive and bring forth life, becoming ONE flesh. But something that was commented on in the podcast about the Catechism indicated that while that is true, there’s more to it than that.
In the eyes of God, the two spouses become one flesh even BEFORE a child may come to exist and physically be one flesh, through the sacrament that is marriage.
Thinking now about this reality makes a lot of sense, but it has become more and more clear to me as we have lived out our lives as a married couple. I understand this better now most certainly than on our wedding day five years ago.
In the last five years, my husband and I have gone through two job changes, three moves, bought a house, been absolutely blessed with a beautiful daughter – now 3, experienced a miscarriage, sufferred through several other family and friends’ deaths and have struggled to grow our family further.
I have received a diagnosis of polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), which likely will continue to make fulfilling our desire for more children difficult. But what caught my heart in the Catechism in a Year podcast is that it does not matter how many children we may be given as gifts on this earth.
The relationship that my husband Ty and I have in the eyes of God does not depend on the number of children we have. Whether we have 17 (as I said I always wanted), or just one (our Emmalyn), our status as a married couple remains the same – we have been joined together as one flesh per our “I dos” in that church five years ago.
Our wedding day was the perfect day for us – we had so much fun, and there was so much love in the day. But that day was not about just us as individuals; it was a day to declare before God, each other and all present that we will help to build up the Body of Christ as disciples to the Lord. Our commitment to each other and to the Lord on that day was more than about just loving my husband. That day and every day since has been about showing everyone around us what love from Christ looks like. Our marriage is about helping each other to make our way eventually to heaven.
In the way we now love and serve each other, we are witnessing to the way Jesus loves and serves His Church – on earth and in eternity.
We absolutely adore our daughter and thank God for her every day. We still pray and wish and dream for more children to add to our family.
But I was reminded in the last month that we have already fulfilled the words of the Gospel in our two becoming one with our simple “I do” at the church in the sacrament of marriage. And for this reason, no matter what happens to our family on earth – whether miscarriage, whether loss of a loved one, whether the blessing of 17 more kids or no more kids, we are joined together as that one flesh and cannot be separated.
“Therefore, what God has joined together, no human being must separate,” Mark 10:9. Happy fifth anniversary, Tyrel.
