Some people insist that the approach to marriage and commitments is changing. Isn't it OK, they ask, to move on when things get stale? Weren't the Ten Commandments written just for a group of people lost in a desert ages ago? And beside that, isn't the modern trend toward "open" marriages? Sex therapy is in, and, some say, the family as it was once known is definitely a thing of the past.

But wait a minute!

We need to stop long enough to consider who or what it is that truly companions us and our families and everyone else. Isn't it God? Mrs. Eddy tells us in the chapter "Marriage" in Science and Health: "Husbands and wives should never separate if there is no Christian demand for it. It is better to await the logic of events than for a wife precipitately to leave her husband or for a husband to leave his wife. If one is better than the other, as must always be the case, the other pre-eminently needs good company. Socrates considered patience salutary under such circumstances, making his Xantippe a discipline for his philosophy." ^{Science and Health, p. 66.}

We can perhaps see an increasingly great yearning among humankind for a release from personal burden—from being the one on whom another depends for income, happiness, even reason for living. But is merely changing partners a solution? Or, in order to find "freedom," selfishly tossing out the window one's responsibility to live the Ten Commandments?

The very first recorded miracle Christ Jesus performed was that of turning water into wine at a wedding feast, as if to indicate we must first abide by the moral law before we can grow into higher realms. We must rise above the animal nature of mortality and build on the rock of innocence and purity. The Ten Commandments, if observed, put us in the position to grasp their essence as stated by Jesus: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." ^{Matt. 22:37-40.}

Jesus also promised, "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." ^{John 10:10.} Loving means that we will live in accord with the law, and that in so doing we will have abundant life. In other words, loving God's law and living it to the extent of our present understanding will bring the true freedom we yearn for.

Loving enough to live rightly, not loving in the mutable sense of the word, does mean letting go of fear. When you love enough, you begin to see that God supplies your every need: your happiness, your life, your home, your activity, your satisfaction, everything. When you love enough to really feel and see this, your higher dependence necessarily begins to free you and others from the clinging to personality that can destroy a relationship.

After raising his friend Lazarus from the tomb, Jesus loved enough to see the necessity of commanding those who had buried Lazarus, "Loose him, and let him go." ^{11:44 .}

During a period when I longed to know how to love, I realized one day that although I seemed to feel little love for anyone, this lack of love was utterly impossible. I saw I must insist on the facts as stated in the Bible and Mrs. Eddy's writings that God, Love, had created my real selfhood and that since my true purpose was to express Love, I had to be loving. It was only that liar, that source of all lies—mortal mind, or the one evil—which suggested I didn't and couldn't love. As I continued to reason along these lines, I also realized that divine Love itself was the origin of this new understanding.

When we begin to insist on these facts for ourselves, even in the face of opposing evidence, we begin to experience the love of Love right where we are, and it does free us from a feeling that we need to cling to matter—in any form. Eventually, we can let go of the lie that man was ever born into matter. His existence is always spiritual.

What contentment comes from trusting in God to the point where we can begin to see that everyone, everywhere, is already loosed, already complete in the consciousness of good, heaven! There never was any existence apart from perfection, because God is All-in-all, self-contained. When we cherish facts such as these and know their sweet certainty, we will have begun to let go in the right way.