In Favor of What You Actually Have
November 24, 2016 § 1 Comment
As anyone who has been married can tell you, marriage is all about reality: it is the process of creating a joint future in close quarters and close partnership. When it is a good match, it is one of the best things in the world; and when it is not – well, then let’s just let it suffice to say that it is not.
Weddings, however, are all about fantasy. My first husband had requested that I wear a big white dress with (in his words) ‘a draggy thing.’ So I had the yards and yards of tulle and the draggy thing, and a veil and 200 or so guests. I looked like Cinderella in white shoes.
That was the wedding in which I fulfilled everyone else’s expectations.
But later, older, wiser, and less prone to fantasy, I remarried, happily so. We will celebrate our ninth anniversary next month.
When I went to purchase a dress for my wedding to my husband Tom, I went to one of those cute little bridal shops, and picked out a nice dress from a catalogue: a bridesmaid’s dress, actually, in shell pink satin.
The day that it arrived, I was ecstatic: I wanted to go in and try it on and feel like a bride. But as a single mom with a tight schedule, the only way I could over there is to bring my son with me, in an appointment sandwiched in between lunch and teaching.
Now, let me tell you: if you want to understand the difference between reality and fantasy, go to a bridal shop as a slightly older single mom in a subdued pink bridal gown that is really a bridesmaid gown repurposed, and stand next to the 20-something young women getting fitted with big white dresses with yards of lace, beads, sequins, and tulle.
Go there and stand next to women who have not yet lost the glossy sheen of youth, who have not known love’s disappointment or despair.
My pink gown was wrinkled and the zipper was broken and gaping open, and my six-year-old son kept picking up those plastic clips that they use for fittings and clipping them randomly all over my dress. ‘Here Mommy: I found another one,’ he would say each time. Thanks, babe.
There is reality and there is fantasy, and the sales ladies at this little bridal salon were none too thrilled to have the two standing side by side.
Have we always been this way about marriage?
In our Torah portion this week, Abraham sends his servant to find a wife for his son Isaac. In the time of the Bible, the normal process of securing a match was to approach a suitable family and have the bride’s father or brother negotiate a shidduch (a pairing) with the father of the groom. In most cases, the woman would need to give consent before the match proceeded. But she was not the one to pick out her husband herself; it was done for her.
So, when we read the story of the negotiations surrounding Rebecca and Isaac’s marriage, I find myself wondering about Rebecca: what did she think of this process? Did it occur to her that she might not like him? Or was she at peace with this arrangement? Was she excited to leave home? Or perhaps a bit frightened?
During the negotiation, the servant recounts the process that caused him to choose to approach her family:
“’I came today to the spring, and I said: O Lord, God of my master Abraham, if You would indeed grant success to the errand on which I am engaged! As I stand by the spring of water, let the young woman who comes out to draw and to whom I say, ‘Please, let me drink a little water from your jar,’ and who answers, ‘You may drink, and I will also draw for your camels’-let her be the wife whom the Lord has decreed for my master’s son.’ I had scarcely finished praying in my heart, when Rebekah came out with her jar on her shoulder, and went down to the spring and drew. And I said to her, ‘Please give me a drink.’ She quickly lowered her jar and said, ‘Drink, and I will also water your camels.’ So I drank, and she also watered the camels. I inquired of her, ‘Whose daughter are you?’ And she said, ‘The daughter of Bethuel, son of Nahor, whom Milcah bore to him.’ And I put the ring on her nose and the bands on her arms. Then I bowed low in homage to the Lord and blessed the Lord, the God of my master Abraham, who led me on the right way to get the daughter of my master’s brother for his son.” (JPS translation)
At the end of this recounting, Rebecca’s father gives his consent to her marriage, and then (and only then) asks her whether she is willing to go with this man to meet her husband. She does not hesitate in saying yes. The impression one receives from this vignette is that she is strong, confident, and outgoing. She is not afraid. I wonder whether her marriage lived up to her expectations? Was she ever surprised by it?
We do have the rabbinic tradition that tells us that her union was a happy one, one of the best marriages we find in the Bible.
Nonetheless, we also have the story of her active trickery with regard to Jacob and Esau’s blessings. She convinces Jacob to trick her husband into giving him Esau’s blessing. Why did that happen? Were she and Isaac not talking to one another at this point? Had the marriage gone sour?
Or, alternatively, was Isaac in on the deception? There are, after all, many clues in the text that he knew what was going on, and that he was, at some level, complicit in the deception. Was her act an example of her clear-eyed confidence, or a symptom of her growing despair? We don’t know.
Regardless, we learn a lot from this story: we all have an image in our head of What Things Should Look Like; some of our greatest disappointments, in fact, are when things don’t match up to that fantasy. We might spend long years in denial, in fact, hoping that the image in our head is at some point matched by the facts on the ground.
What gets us into trouble, however, is when we pretend that the reality and the fantasy are one and the same. When we think that the job or the marriage or the living situation will get better when we know in our bones that it will not. But it is very easy to hold on to that fantasy, and to hope for the best.
Our relationship to God – and by extension, our relationship to Judaism – can also be a bit like that. We think that things should happen a certain way, and then they do not. Should we give up on our faith? Should we get angry at God? Or do we recognize that all relationships have their ebb and flow?
If things don’t unfold the way you think that they should, it’s okay to be angry at God. And when you are done being angry, then it is time to rethink your expectations, to let go of a vision of What Things Should Look Like in favor of a deeper appreciation of What You Actually Have.
As I said, my first marriage started in fantasy – in the great white wedding with a tulle-and-lace Cinderella gown with a draggy-thing and a tiara and white gloves. And then that most lovely wedding ended in the reality of a divorce; the unraveling of the relationship began almost immediately even though it took many years to complete. You need to have shared goals, and you need to be able to communicate.
But that second dress – the shell-pink bridesmaid’s dress, beautiful at last after it had been steam-pressed, altered and repaired – was the one in which I traded fantasy for the reality of a mature and lasting love, the fairy tale for happily-ever-after.
Godtalk 
Thank you. The reality of giving oneself to another, to just being the best you can be, to service, is always a mystery. Such wisdom is required to admit one’s error and press on to find happiness.