How to Stay Married: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told

by Harrison Scott Key

“Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly.” G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Miracles are easy to believe when you need one yourself. I’ve needed several, lately.

It would take me years to understand this, but the understanding began in that church hallway, that a good person is a temporary and imaginary creature, as make-believe as unicorns and fire-breathing cows, because the best of us are often the worst, full of proud and viperous snakes, believing ourselves gods. The dragons did not just live in history and myth. They lived inside me.

Blaming God is like blaming Walt Disney for your inability to have fun at the Magic Kingdom.

It just seems to cheapen the whole act of divine petition. I am sorry your cousin’s stepmom’s little teacup poodle has an anal fungus. But I am not going to lift up Tiny’s name in prayer.

The enemy was Now. Now was bad. Now would strip your family naked and turn your sons into rutting lizards and your daughters into childless foot models. Now would make your husband breed with poker machines and your wife do the Electric Slide. Now would raise your taxes and take your guns, and guns were important because your sons needed alternatives to the imaginary guns of video games, which melted their brains and could make them do terrible things, such as go looking for your guns. The

“God likes to work on broken things.”

That’s the thing they don’t tell you about love. You can love somebody, really love somebody, while being totally okay with their unfortunate mauling by an escaped Siberian tiger.