THE SECOND TIME AROUND

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Riding my kids home from school, 11 year old Jacob asks, "What does that mean?" 'I LOVE YOU...NOW GO AWAY.' He was reading the headline on the front of an Oprah magazine their grandmother had given me.

"It means that sometimes you need some time apart from the one you Love...to recharge your emotional batteries so you don't let life get in the way of your Love." I thought my reply was pretty good. But of course-he one upped me.

"Or maybe it's better the second time around," Jacob replied. I said, "You mean the second marriage?" "No," he replied, "The second marriage to the same person." My eyes grew wide, "What do you mean?"

In his wisely youthful innocence -he said matter of factly, "Sometimes when you've been married a long time and you get mad at each other and fight, you break up and start another relationship. But then you find that relationship is really not any better and the things you were mad at with the other person are gone. So, you get back together with the other person and you are happy again." How about that?!

Sometimes when Jacob talks to me, I have to think really hard about how he got his answers. Did I say something like that, did he hear it on TV or is he gifted with that rare analytical spiritual wisdom that flies in on the wings of the Holy Spirit? It's unnerving sometimes to listen to him. But at the same time it is deeply inspiring to hear someone so young-my flesh and blood-speak so fluidly and prophetically-and with such sincere honesty.

I thought about Jacob's words as I watched a young couple say their wedding vows this weekend. They were so in Love, so happy and so optimistic about their future together. I prayed they would always lean on this memory-to Love one another, through sickness and in health...to never let the bad times get in the way of the good, that brought them to the altar of marriage. And I felt a sense of joy at knowing that people still believe in the bonds of 'til death do us part...and in the sanctity of marriage. Because it is in the womb of marriage that new life is created and blessed...the gift of children...a gift that keeps on giving long after we have passed on.

I've known couples who made it work the second time...one had been separated 19 years before they reunited...the other couple spent ten years apart and then remarried. Wasted years, too much water under the bridge?...Nope...they negotiated that great divide and conquered all the anger and confusion and resentments...with a lot of help from above...and two open and Loving hearts.

When I told Jacob their stories, he responded in childlike faith, "That was God's Love protecting them."

Need I say more?!

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