One flesh … just the combination of those two words makes us blush, or snicker, or raise our eyebrows at each other … in church. And when your adolescent child refers to yourself and your hubby as ‘one flesh’, well, then you know you have a story to tell.
It is not as if our kids have not heard the the phrase ‘one flesh’ before. It is one they have probably heard at church, at school (they attend a Christian school), and at home. The context in which they are familiar with it is from Genesis 2:21-24 :
“So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said,
“This at last is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called Woman,
because she was taken out of Man.”
Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”
So, for our kids, it is simply a statement of fact … until … they reach adolescents, and their sexual awareness awakens. Then they too will blush and snicker when they hear those words. Recently though, hubby and I were ‘accused’ … at the dinner table … of being one flesh. You can imagine the looks that hubby and I shared, along with raised eyebrows. The mutual look at each other communicating, non-verbally, “they have no idea how true it is,” just about had us both in uproarious laughter.
Then, one of us had the ability to control our laughter and ask what they meant. The response was great! “Well you two are similar in how you answer us, and how you want us to live that you are like one person.” We all laughed, but hubby and I looked at each other, one of those eye-locked moments when we were truly of one mind, as we contemplated what was said.
I do not think there could be a more desired, less hoped for compliment that our kids could ever say of us.
You see our marriage is as far from perfect as is possible, we have both wronged each other in more ways than either of us would ever admit to any other living human being, and there have been numerous times when (validly, for the standards of the day and time we are living) we have both stayed together for the long term health and benefit of our kids. We have failed our vows and original commitment to each other over and over. We are individually, and together, flawed flesh.
Yet, out of the mouths of our babe, came the most beautiful words. And then it hit me, our ‘oneness’, our being ‘one flesh’ has far more to do with the one who put us together, the one who made us for the other, than anything that hubby or I could ever do. The story of our being ‘one flesh’ is one that reveals the Maker, and the miracles He does, despite our fleshly humanness.
Last weekend I had a glimpse of simplicity, of relaxation, of down-time. And what flowed out of me in the quiet of the unhindered hours of that Saturday morning was far more creativity than I had experienced in a very, very long time.
itsawonderfilledlife 