Confession Time: So I have been married for about four months at this point, but I have a confession. Before I got married and for the previous 12 years of my life, I have pretended that I have been the main character of my very own TV show. It’s pretty immature, self-consumed, and self-centered, and to be honest, I didn’t really care, I actually enjoyed it.
Each school year was a new season of my life. It started with “The Tyrome Show” up until my senior year in high school, the “The Tyrome Show: College Years” when I was at MVNU (where I met these brothers who make up the writers of the various blogs). Those were the best years of my life! Since I was only there for three years, the series only lasted three seasons. Then I took my talents to Chicago for two back-to-back series, “The Rise of the Falcon” and “The Falcon Rises”. The former chronicled my four years as a seminary student at Moody, then the latter, my life since graduation, which centered around my 1st full-time job at Moody and my struggle to find community, post-academia. Though I struggled through the 1st year, the last three years have been a huge blessing finding community, which led to falling in love.
After 12 seasons and four series, it is time to call it quits. Thematically, I came to the point in which the narrative of my life no longer has me as the stand-alone protagonist, but I am now one with my wife. Theologically, I have come to realize that though “my story” is my story, it belongs to a greater metanarrative about God. He is the main character in every person’s story. Maturity-wise, let’s be real. I don’t have a show, no channel, and no live studio audience who laughs at my jokes. I woke up, did life, and went to sleep.
So it was time for a curtain call. It was a franchise finale and an imaginary acting retirement, but in so many ways, that is what marriage is. What I mean by that is, ‘yes’, my life becomes no longer centered around me and me being the titular character, but life united with someone else as one. In marriage, we forfeit the “right” to be selfish and seeking your own good. You surrender to honoring God in sacrificing for your spouse. Men must lay down their lives like Christ in humble servant leadership and women in humble submission.
Marriage within itself has character development, plot twists, and reoccurring themes. It is actually a new series, instead of a new season. You must change. You must die. You must mature. You go to an altar, and lay yourself there. You offer yourself as a sacrifice, a living one (Romans 12:1). But that’s what marriage is. That is completely different from the previous life. There’s a new storyline, new characters, and sometimes a new setting. The tone is different. The atmosphere is different. For all intents and purposes, it is a completely brand new series. Which means every wedding is a series finale. But series finales are hard and emotional. The cliffhanger is, ‘What happens next?’ Your show has been going on for several years, and in one day, the trajectory changes.
Marriage is hard, but it is beautiful. It is one of the greatest displays of the gospel, which is why the enemy would love nothing more than to “steal and kill and destroy” marriages (John 10:10). It is two people making the decision to give their all to each other out of a love for the other’s good above their own. That is what Jesus did in laying down His life for His bride, to save us from eternal judgment, and we lay down our lives in submission to His will, as an act of worship for His glory. Love is the motivation! No matter what we do, He does not walk out on us, and no matter what life throws at us, we do not walk out Him. No prenups, just faithfulness and love.
We should all be afraid of marriage to varying degrees because we must think outside of ourselves, and not to our own interests and conveniences. As I got ready for the “Falcon Finale”, the reality of death & surrender for life & freedom became the dominant themes.
Last May, I took on a risk with no concern for a payout. I put myself out there to find what I never imagined would come, and it only took 28 years to find her. We missed each other on several occasions: SonFest 2005 (a Christian concert on MVNU’s campus), the Ryan-Josi Seibert wedding in 2011, our friend’s move in 2013, the CRU Inner City fellowship dinner in 2014 and 2015, and six years of her volunteering on Moody’s campus, while I was a student and staff member. We were both from Cleveland, graduated high school the same year, and came to Chicago within a year of each other. We had been on a collision course for ten years and finally met … and kids, that’s How I Met Your Mother.
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