Writing Your Vows: Part 2 - “… Aaaaaand It’s A Home Run!”

October 01, 1932 – Chicago, Il – Wrigley Field – It’s Game 3 of the World Series between the New York Yankees and the Chicago Cubs. Babe Ruth is at-bat and has two strikes on a 4-4 count in the bottom of the 5th. Before Cubs pitcher, Charlie Root, throws his third pitch, Babe Ruth points to the flagpole deep in centerfield, calling his shot amidst the deafening roar of jeering and screaming fans. As the pitch comes rocketing towards him, Babe Ruth steps into it with everything he’s got and a crack like thunder erupts from his bat as he sends the ball hurtling into the centerfield stands, exactly as he indicated that he would! The Babe called his shot and delivered! “The ball is going, going, going, high into the centerfield stands… aaaaand it is a home run!”

So what does this iconic moment in history have to do with your wedding vows? Well, actually… everything. That moment is a perfect template for what you are looking to do when you craft your vows. It is very likely that even if you don’t care for baseball (like me, in fact), you’ve heard of Babe Ruth and you likely know that he called his shot and hit that homerun. The part of that story that doesn’t get retold very often, however, is that he called his shot twice previously and failed to deliver before hitting that last pitch into the history books.

Writing your vows is not about being flawless. And it’s not about being flashy for others or looking good. Writing your vows is about calling your shot and telling your fiancé(e) exactly what you intend to do in your marriage and then spending the rest of your life delivering on that promise. Hitting a game-winning home run is a metaphor for accomplishing something that is inherently difficult, namely, loving someone more than you love yourself and then working at making them happy. This is done not by giving them everything that they want and abnegating your own desires, but by being vulnerable about what you need in order to become the best version of you that you can be and actively working on yourself to accomplish exactly that. Your vows are the time for you to call your shot, so let’s examine exactly what that looks like.

In my last blog entry, I wrote that a vow is not just a promise, but a solemn declaration of intention. This is true, but like so many things in life, a concrete example will increase understanding as opposed to merely discussing abstract concepts. Here’s a fairly common line that you will hear during someone’s vows:

“I promise to love and support you.”

This is a good promise. It’s simple and straight-forward, but it’s also vague. Asking yourself the how behind that phrase, however, can change the meaning entirely.

For me, I know that my wife does not like to do dishes. She did them when she was single, and she will do them now, but the activity is a chore and is not enjoyable for her. It’s not fun for me either, but it’s one of those activities that is a daily necessity, so I express my love for her in the action of doing the vast majority of our dishes. As a vow, I don’t need to go into procedural detail about unloading the clean dishes from the washer, rinsing the dirty ones in the sink (because our dishwasher is the worst), loading the dishwasher, running it, handwashing everything that is not safe to be machine washed, drying them or placing them on the drying rack, and then also cleaning the counters and stove as part and parcel of the whole task. That is too specific and you will lose everybody, but finding a middle ground between the two might look like this:

“I promise to do the dishes for you every day for the rest of my life.”

That is not Shakespeare, but that is a pretty heartfelt and genuine promise to make, especially if, within the context of your relationship, that activity is a big issue for her. And having identified and addressed something specific, it makes it easier to edit into something more formal and poetic if that’s the direction you want to take it. More on that later, but for now…

“I vow to take the lead in maintaining our household by washing every dish and bowl, and with every fork and spoon I scrub, know that I am actually saying, ‘I love you’.”

Now that is so much more interesting and memorable than simply saying that you will love and support your spouse! Here’s the thing, you don’t have to hit a home run every time you’re at-bat, so long as you don’t ever decide to simply phone it in. There are going to be a lot of at-bats in your marriage; it is only failure if you give up. The real work of your vows (and by extension your marriage) comes not in the big moments like the Babe’s home run, but in the small, daily actions and routines that are actually the countless hours of practice in the batting cages (if you’ll permit me to extend the metaphor). These cumulatively add up and compound over the years to create the skills and muscle memory necessary to hit a home run more often than not. If you examine your intentions in detail and call your shot four or five times, your vows will become that much more meaningful and serve as a blueprint for what a successful marriage looks like for you and your partner. Love is the best thing that we do, so call your shot and swing for the fences.