Ed Vitagliano
AFA Journal news editor
August 2001 – Dearest Lindsay,
It is difficult for me even to think about, let alone write or speak about, the fact that you will, in a few short months, be 18 years old. Less than a year beyond that magnificent milestone will be your high school graduation, then college. The portion of your life lived solely under my roof will be over, the time having slipped through my fingers like water in a clear, cold stream. One moment, it feels as if I can grab and hold it; the next moment, it’s gone forever, rushing away to its appointed destiny.
When you were in your mother’s womb, I dreamed about you, prayed over you, and spoke to you. At the time I didn’t know if what they told me was true – that you were able to hear my voice while in the womb – but I took no chances. I talked to you often.
I was in the delivery room with your mother when you were born; in fact, I saw you before she did. You cried and cried when the nurse began wrapping you in a blanket. Your mother can confirm this, but when you first heard my voice, you stopped crying. It was just for a few, heavenly moments, but in that instant I believed you not only heard my voice, but recognized it.
For the next 17 years plus, you’ve heard my voice every day. It seems like I’ve been advising you on everything pertaining to life since the moment you entered this world.
When you began your teenage years, you quickly mastered the ability to roll your eyes in disgust, often accompanied by the groaning complaint, “Oh, Daddy, please! No more lectures!”
While it may smack of mindless, mechanical nagging, I think a dad can’t help lecturing. When Dad walks in that door after work, he knows he has such a short amount of time available to help shape the young life before him and build a foundation upon which an entire life will be built. How do I pour a lifetime’s worth of knowledge and experience into my daughter in such a short span of time? How do I do it well? Lecturing has its place.
Of course, we’ve had a lot of fun poking fun at my lecture addiction. Remember the times we’d pass a dead possum on the road, or some other hapless critter? I would jokingly say, “Kids, let that be a lesson to you!” and then draw some wild-eyed life principle from it, dealing with anything from looking both ways before crossing the street to not taking drugs or making sure you ate everything on your plate.
Now, as we stare your departure full in the face, your independence is no longer akin to a fairy tale which begins, “Someday, a long time from now….” It is ever so real, and before I know it, you, my daughter, will become a wife and mother. Soon, it will be you giving the lectures. It will be you saying, “Let that be a lesson to you!” It will be you dealing with a teenager’s rolling eyes.
As you prepare to join the ranks of adulthood, you’ll have to make many decisions concerning critical issues. Perhaps the most important decision will be in the matter of relationships. So permit me one final, important lecture.
Why marry?
In Genesis 2:18, God says of Adam, “It is not good for man to be alone; I will make a helper suitable for him.”
Alone. There may not be a word in all of human language that carries with it deeper feelings of sadness, hopelessness, and even fear. We are social creatures, and we were created to need others.
This is why Ecclesiastes says, “Two are better than one…for if either of them falls, the one will lift up his companion. But woe to the one who falls when there is not another to lift him up.…A cord of three strands is not quickly torn apart” (4:9-12). Relationships help us bear the burdens of life, just as Adam needed a “helper.” Two are better than one, the wise man says, because it is like multiplying and intertwining the strands of a rope to make it stronger.
In the last 40 to 50 years, our culture has rejected the concept of relationships which was derived from the Judeo-Christian worldview. Instead, as a people we have embraced contrary themes: that human sexuality is meant for pleasure first and foremost; that marriage is a corrupt institution because it places unnatural restrictions on man’s universal, hedonistic impulses, and thus leads to the hypocrisy of monogamy; and since marriage is useless at best, any form of relationship is equal to another.
These ideas have taken root in our culture, and they are why so many people – 56% in a poll last year – see nothing wrong with cohabitation. Unfortunately, when it comes to cohabitation, many people go beyond the mere theoretical aspects of it. According to Census Bureau statistics, by the time a woman reaches the age category of 30-34, 49% say they have lived with a man to whom they were not married.
Oh, sure, many insist they are only doing so in order to prepare themselves for marriage – so they will do a better job of it when they finally take the plunge.
However, studies continue to demonstrate a different reality, one that defies the expectations of those who would reject marriage. Statistically speaking, couples who cohabit are more likely to break up once they marry, not less likely. Living together results in marriages with lower levels of marital interaction and higher levels of disagreement and instability than their counterparts who never cohabited. And those who have lived together have a significantly higher rate of divorce than those who did not live together first.
However, I don’t celebrate over such scientific “proof,” happily waving these stats under the noses of those who commend cohabitation. For what would happen if, in the future, statistics showed that couples who cohabit would divorce less often after they finally got married – or were happier than those who did not live together first? Would that make living together right?
That’s the problem with using statistics as your hunting dog – sometimes they come up behind you when you’re not looking and bite you on the haunches. Marriage is a right and honorable institution, not because the statistics say it is, but because God says it is.
God is, after all, the author of relationships – or, I should say, of right relationships – and He is the foundation of the same. God has nothing to do with, and will not bless, relationships that are built on anything other than His word.
All this reasoning is fine, and it is profitable for you should you choose to accept it. However, I suppose when my final lecture is over, when I have said all to you I can possibly think to say, when we have passed the last dead possum on the side of the road, what you will ultimately remember is the model of relationship you have witnessed in our home with your own eyes.
From the very first moment I laid eyes on your mother, I have loved her as my own soul. I have not been a perfect husband to her – just as I have not been a perfect father to you. But I have loved the woman that God gave me and I have served her, cherished her and lifted her spirits. We have accomplished more together than we could have done apart, and, together with God’s abundant grace, the cord we fashioned together has not broken under the strain of life.
That, I hope, is the final argument to which you will listen, the final answer if ever you are tempted to decline God’s blessed, satisfying banquet of marriage, in exchange for the weak, thin gruel that the world has to offer. I hope you will remember that Mom and Dad loved God’s will enough to obey it; and they loved God’s truth enough to live it.
Let that be a lesson to you, Lindsay. Let it be a lesson, indeed.
Love, Daddy
