License to Renew

This past week, I had the absolute joy of officiating a wedding for a truly beautiful couple. Well, not exactly a wedding, a vow renewal. After 40 years of marriage, they stood before family and friends to promise their lives to each other all over again. There’s something moving about standing before two people as they choose each other anew — the hope in their eyes, the laughter, the way their families beam with pride. But there was something deeper this time. When they spoke those familiar words “in sickness and in health”, you could see the weight of four decades behind them. These weren’t hopeful promises about an unknown future, they were declarations of a love that had already weathered storms, celebrated triumphs, and held fast through everything life had thrown at them. If love, as a poet once observed, is attending a thousand funerals of who someone used to be, then it is also bearing full witness and being captured by the other who is always and forever emerging before you.

At weddings, I never say, “The two shall become one”. If anything, I’d say, “The two shall become two”. It’s a massive trap to let mystery escape. To love is to act. Love is not explained by any feeling whatsoever. Certainly, love is accompanied by feeling but never constituted by it. If there is no other, there is no act. Watching this couple after four decades, I could see that their love wasn’t just sustained by memories or feelings, but by the daily choice to meet each, to act with love, to respond to who the other is becoming. Every act of love creates community — and after 40 years, they’ve built quite a community indeed.

But it got me thinking (dangerous, I know): what if marriage licences worked a bit like driver’s licences? Hear me out. What if every five years, couples had to consciously choose to renew their commitment? Not because we expect marriages to fail, but because there’s something powerful about actively choosing your person again and again. No automatic renewals, no taking it for granted, just a moment every few years to look at each other and say, “Yes, I choose you. Again.”

Speaking of licences, I made a rather sobering discovery this week when I went to renew my driver’s licence. Apparently, I’m now officially “too old” for a 10-year licence. The government has decided that at my age, they need to keep a closer eye on whether I can still tell the difference between the brake and the accelerator every five years instead of ten. I’m not sure whether to be offended or impressed by their optimism.

It’s funny how these little bureaucratic moments can catch you off guard. One day you’re the young minister with a decade-long licence, and the next you’re in the “needs monitoring” category. But there’s grace in it too. Regular check-ins aren’t necessarily a bad thing, whether it’s with our driving or our relationships.

Here’s to choosing each other, again and again, and to staying alert behind the wheel — both literally and metaphorically.

Thank you for being part of the Inner Circle,