CHRIST
IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter…
©
The knock on the back door
of the parsonage. Helen answered. An awkward and somewhat embarrassed couple
stood there. They wanted to see the preacher. I got up off the sofa,
reluctantly, shoeless, and went to the door. As soon as Helen was out of
ear-shot, they announced that they wanted to get married, and needed to do it
quickly.
Great. Another run-away
couple wanting to get married. They weren’t the first, and they wouldn’t be the
last. I told them to walk over to the side door of the church building while I
got my shoes on. They said they would rather wait behind the house, where they
could not be seen from the street.
After I got my shoes on,
they almost ran from parsonage to church building. I was hard-pressed to keep
up with them. Once in my office, they explained that they had just that morning
decided to get married and needed to do it before their families found out.
I said I could not marry
them without a marriage license. The woman produced one out of her purse. I
asked why they had a license if they had just decided that day to get married,
since our state had a three day waiting period. They did not hesitate to say
that had given the clerk an extra twenty dollars to backdate the license by
three days. I wasn’t surprised. That was the way business was done in our
county.
“Why are your families
opposed to your marriage?” I asked.
“Our kids are just
selfish,” they replied. “All they think about is money. They are worried about
inheritance. But we’re in love.”
I was only twenty-five,
and anyone over forty looked about the same to me, so I probably overestimated
their age at sixty. They may well have been only fifty or so. They were nicely
dressed, polite, well-spoken… and scared.
“They’re out looking for
us right now, the kids are,” they said. “We’ve got to get married before they
find us. If you can’t do it, we’ve got to get out of here quick and find
somebody who will.”
I didn’t have much time to
decide how to handle this. I’d had similar requests before, but they came from
teen-agers. I felt comfortable dealing with them. But these were people the age
of my parents. Surely they were old enough to know what they were doing and to
have the right to marry. Didn’t love come ahead of inheritance? What right did
their selfish children have to keep them apart?
Also, I’ve always had
trouble saying “no,” especially to people on the run. I would have been great
as an underground railroad operator.
So I got Helen to come
over to witness, along with the part-time janitor, who just happened to be in
the building, and stood them up in the chancel and married them. They hurried
off, and I never saw them again.
I won’t detail all the
problems with this event, and the way I handled it. You can figure those out
easily enough. Remember, though, that you are not twenty-five and dealing with
people the age of your parents. So I make no apologies. I’m sure I’d do it
again, even though I’m older and wiser now.
I’m pro-marriage. Not
everyone should marry, not everyone can marry, not everyone should stay
married, but if you want to marry, love should come before law. Laws, and in-laws,
should help people marry the one they love, not keep them from doing so.
If you want to get
married, just go knock on the back door of the parsonage. Thankfully, though, I
don’t live there anymore.
John
Robert McFarland
The
“place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s
Upper Peninsula, where life is defined by winter even in the summer! [This
phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.]
I
tweet as yooper1721.
