I didn’t want to get married. The idea that I could make and hold a promise to God and a husband until my death seemed too immense for a girl of twenty three. I didn’t like the paper work, I didn’t want the ceremony. I was uncomfortable with the limitations I knew would arise from the everyday compromise of two people making a life together. I loved Dan and in loving him I felt I had already committed my soul to him knowing I was fallible, human and that someday God might want more from me. We discussed me dread of taking an oath to be bound to him forever before God. I’d seen how oath’s bound the people around me, keeping them from expanding their perceptions and consciousness of the world by keeping them in one mode of living, isolated and ignorant, their lives limited and removed from a vaster knowledge of the world. I didn’t want to share my freedom, compromise my passions and become someone else’s labeled and conquered being sworn before God to always be and due as I’d promised to be and due when still, in all reality, a child. People who are boxed in and unhappy look for escape and the emotional fall out of a broken promise is devastating and painful.

The perception of what it is to exist as viewed through an innocent Orange:

An orange sits on a counter top, it is the everyday type of orange, young and shiny in its freshness. In shape and color and lingering scent it vividly proclaims itself an orange. If in ego it were to swear before God to always be the orange would it remain unaltered, whole and perfect, believing in the strength of its identity? Though the orange believes one reality, one destiny, its fate is very different. Taking the orange up we peel away it’s skin. It is now a naked altered orange but still an orange. Does it feel shame for not remaining as it though it would, true to its youthful innocent nature, the nature it swore to maintain before God? Is it more of an orange or less of an orange now that it stands without the skin that once proclaimed its identity? Lifted, moved and dropped, it is transformed yet again into juice. It is now the essence of orange, its fibrous walls removed until it is free flowing orange, no longer contained by structure. With each alteration, the orange has changed, evolved and become more and less than it was to begin with. Yet if this orange really had proclaimed itself before God to always be an orange is it now in an energetic violation of oath? Has it become the Oath breaker, the liar and pathless turncoat who stands for nothing? Will it suffer mentally and emotionally because of this violation of oath? Will it ever see itself as whole and complete again? Or is it lost now forever?

It is, in reality, a simple orange and we can hope it takes its alteration with the spirit and courage of all citrus fruit. Humans are not oranges. We do not rest in the nature of our alteration, accepting each phase with quiet resignation.

The fallible, sentient human may make a million promises in its lifetime. How many will we keep and how many will we alter, bend and break in order to move with the world? Sadly, when a promise or oath is made and broken, the danger does not lie in the loss of God’s love, but in our leaving the presence of his loving light through our own guilt, our inability to accept change and our fear that we are no longer as good, as pure and as loveable as we were. In these moments we punish ourselves far more viciously than any living creature deserves.

God’s light and love never leave us. His joyful acceptance of our stumbles and falls are like those of a parent watching a beloved baby take its first step. In breaking the oath we become liars to ourselves and our faith and to this God who lovingly only wants the best for us. Thus we fall from grace through an internal struggle that has nothing to do with God and everything to do with self-disillusionment, self-hatred and the failure to meet the expectations of our earthly, manmade social paradigms.

In summation, I can tell you that I’ve kept my word to my husband. I’ve loved, honored and cherished him as I swore I would and I have no regrets. My path has altered far from where my dreams would have taken me and with every thought or plan I make, I must put family first while I make time for myself where I can. Marrying didn’t make our love stronger; it didn’t bind us in any permanent structure that could wipe out the possibility of separation but it has brought a tender loving trust that I would not have experienced outside of marriage. The oath hasn’t kept us safe from the terrors of loss but has made us work harder in our marriage to identify when we act out of love and when we act out of duty. In looking at our motives and perceptions we gain greater insights into each other’s souls and keep our love strong. In marriage we have matured and been stripped of our selfish ideals and self-interested perceptions. In marriage we have gained a life based on service, love and a deep mutual respect that evolves and grows richer with each passing year.

EE Orme