Appreciating Marriage

Bald Man and I have spent the last two hours completely engrossed in African-American Lives 2 on PBS. There is so much to process while and after watching such a show, but one aspect that my heart tends to dwell on is the marriages of the slaves in early America. So many unions were unrecognized and ignored by their owners.

I try to imagine having begun a family, loved a man, to be sold and separated. Ripped from my husband and my own children at another’s whim or desire for money. I can’t imagine the pain, despair, fear, and aching loneliness. I can’t, and the thought that so many endured this can bring me to tears. And then there were those who were used as entertainment by their masters, or to show the master’s power. Raped and treated as property. My heart weeps for the people who had to suffer so much heartache.

I’ve also been reading a book recommended by a friend, The Other Boleyn Girl (which I just saw is now a movie). While a piece of fiction, it is historical fiction and some of the goings on in the book are based in fact. Without giving the story away, I think it’s safe to say that I’m also so grateful to not live in a time or a situation where my marital status matters much to anyone, in so much as it doesn’t effect the status of the family from which I came, and no one feels the need to use it as a carrot for a horse of power.

And on top of it all, I think we’d be ignorant to think that this type of situation is extinct, that every woman today has it so much better than the individuals in history. So many women around the world are still subject to being property, to being a pawn of those in power. And I ache for them. I thank God that I live where I do when I do in the marriage that I am so blessed to be in, and I wonder what I can do to help those who are not and who just want the freedom to love and to choose and to not be fearful.