Dear Matthew and Simona, This is your first Christmas.
Not ever— but together… as two who are now one.
All the other Christmases you’ve experienced have been about Matthew. Or Simona. Or Matthew trying to catch Simona… and Simona (in the words of my less-than-subtle mother) “running just fast enough to get caught”!
This Christmas is not about any of that. The wedding is planned and accomplished, photographed and photo-shopped. The honeymoon is over and done with remnants of beautiful memories tucked away in boxes.
This Christmas is your first as ONE.
It is about the ONE you are becoming; the forging of Matt into Simo and Simo into Matt. This Christmas is about becoming MatthewSimonaComer. MSC.
How can it be that one ceremony, a few words of promise, a signature on a document, can change everything? Can change you?
Can change Christmas?
When each of you chose to entwine your life with the other, it was more than merely an act of commitment—those vows you spoke were a decision.
Though you could not have fully understood all the implications of that decision, the dawning of what it meant is now changing the way you do life.
Your giving of yourselves to each other before God is unleashing changes in the fundamental essence of…
who you are…
how you live…
what you do…
and…
what you don’t do.
This ideal of two becoming one has chafed for centuries. It’s never been easy. In fact many take issue with this idea. Because, let’s be honest, this two melding into one is…
hard…
humbling…
inconvenient and uncomfortable.
Two becoming one goes against the grain of all that independence and individuality we fight for so furiously.
Two becoming one is fraught with giving up… giving in… working it out, choosing.
Jesus said it succinctly:
“Haven’t you read… at the beginning the Creator made them male and female, and said,
‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh?’
So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
Matthew 19:4-6
The joining of Matthew to Simona and Simona to Matthew is both a mission and a mystery.
Somehow, in some way we can only see in snatches, the blending of the two of you into ONE hints at the bending of God come down— His mission, first glimpsed by Mary with a babe in her arms.
This blending of the two of you mirrors God’s love-fueled determination to set His bride free of all that came between His heart and ours.
And more…
This forming of something beautiful in the blending of two into one hints at the mystery of a God who created us with the capacity, the need, to live in Him.
To be ONE with Him.
Paul called it a “profound mystery”, this loving and leading, this two becoming one, this dance to the sometimes discordant music of romance and real life.
My dear son and daughter, may I just ask you to take a moment and think about that? To ponder that profound mystery… to allow yourselves to see who you are becoming?
And more:
Will you give yourselves grace when this forging is harder than you’d thought it would be?
This losing of yourselves to find who you really are— together— is never easy; it takes time, it takes talking, it takes thinking through.
And it takes forever.
Loving you both, and loving the emerging of who you are,
Merry-almost-Christmas!
From my heart,
Mom
P.S. To those who are listening.. Is it worth it? This work of giving up and giving in and giving to each other? Are you learning to be who you really are in the midst of becoming One? Can you tell us about it? Your stories make truth real.