An essay by Mary

Matchmaker

Mary Ellen Rayles

“Matchmaker, Matchmaker make me a match,

Find me a find, catch me a catch,

Matchmaker, matchmaker look through your book,

And make me a perfect match.” 

These words are from the musical drama, Fiddler on the Roof.  It is a compelling story about a poor milkman and his family set in Tsarist Russia in 1905.   In this song, Tevye’s three eldest daughters are dreaming about finding the perfect husband and escaping the pitfalls of an arranged marriage by the village Matchmaker.  My family enjoys singing obscure songs from old musicals and this is one of our favorites.

I recently celebrated my thirty-third wedding anniversary and have been thinking about what makes a perfect match.  I believe that good matches do not happen by chance.  I remember the days when I was a university student and thinking about what my future held.   Many of my friends were facing graduation and felt the cultural pressure to find someone to marry.  I saw them choose someone who would improve their social status or enhance their career.   Others chose someone because they met an emotional need or there was a physical attraction.  To me, these seemed like empty reasons.

I wasn’t even sure if I would be a person who would marry, but if I did, I wanted to make a match that would last for the rest of my life.  It needed to be rooted in a deeper purpose and be a relationship that challenged each of us to grow.  I looked at the lives of people I knew who were cultivating lasting and meaningful marriages and I knew it was rare, but possible.

When I met the man who eventually became my husband, he was unlike anything I expected in appearance, career, education, family, age, status . . . all the things most people measure.  But what I saw surprised me and challenged me.  I had never met a person who was so genuinely selfless and kind.  He respected and loved people from all walks of life. He made people laugh and they loved him.

I wasn’t sure if I was the right match for someone like him.  When he asked me to marry him in the fall of my senior year I told him no.  But eventually I became convinced that we shared the same core values and that this was a person with whom I could happily share the rest of my life.  We will both admit that cultivating that kind of relationship takes honest conversations, compromise, trust and above all, forgiveness.

We have faced difficulties and joys that we never would have imagined.  Our strengths and weaknesses complement each other and sometimes drive each other crazy.  But I believe our relationship was meant to be and there is no other quite like it.  On a good day you may hear us singing our heads off:  “Bring me no ring, find me no find, catch me no catch, unless it’s a matchless match.”