There is a couple I know who found their marriage nearly untenable, and in some need of divine Providence to rescue it, or, at least, some sort of divine guidance to show them the way, sometimes one day at a time — sometimes one hour at a time.

Readers of a certain age who remember the early ’90s — think GenXers in flannel shirts playing hacky sack on idyllic college campuses — will recall the popular one-hit wonder Breakfast at Tiffany’s” by Deep Blue Something. The song is about an impending breakup, the narrator desperate to find some sort of “common ground” with his significant other to salvage it. That leads to the song’s catchy chorus:

 

And I said, ‘What about Breakfast at Tiffany’s?’
She said, ‘I think I remember that film
And as I recall, I think we both kinda liked it.’
And I said, ‘Well, that’s the one thing we got.’

 

While the Audrey Hepburn/George Peppard classic from 1961 was a whimsical link for the two in the song, J.R.R. Tolkien — particularly The Lord of the Rings — proved to be the common denominator for the couple in our story, when it seemed nothing could hoist up what once was. Everything that should be the bedrock of their marriage: faith, the sacraments, Scripture, prayer, family and memories of years together, was not sustaining it the way it should.

How to provide counsel in this uncomfortable spiritual desert? It was an agonizingly long dark night for their souls, painful to witness, resentment and tension looming daily. Perhaps the best solution was to go the way half the marriages these days go — over and done.

But what about the children? The house? What about the marriage vows? Was this to be another fractured family glued by second or third marriages, amalgamating other families into one’s own? It’s common, it happens, it’s tragic and like life, it’s messy, and who, after all, am I to judge?

But everything is there, again, in those vows. I was a wedding videographer as a side gig in college. At some, unfortunately, the tension was already palpable. One tends to overlook those moments for the joyous occasion a wedding naturally is. So when looking through the viewfinder during the all-important exchange of vows, after working them enough times I began to sense which ones were authentic, and which ones, sadly, were perfunctory.

I know our couple in question, the ones facing that marriage drought, were authentic in that moment on that day 10 years ago.

I know because I was the groom.

And when nothing seemed to be working, there waiting to be discovered was the work of J.R.R. Tolkien — the books, the movies, and for me, the man. The Catholic, the faithful husband and father, the writer.

Without knowing it, it was Tolkien who was the common ground from which we could reconnect. It was almost an epiphany when the realization struck that the Peter Jackson film trilogy — The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), The Two Towers (2002) and The Return of the King (2003) — were our favorite movies. This realization only manifested itself when we would watch them, which we had made an annual event without thinking twice that it had become some sort of tradition.

At a local bookstore, we found a Lord of the Rings checkerboard set (I have yet to win). My wife remembers her grandfather reading The Hobbit to her and the other grandchildren; I remember my older brother and cousin discussing Middle-earth for hours over the phone in the 1980s.

These days, I’ve drawn on inspiration from Tolkien’s Letters from Father Christmas he wrote (as Father Christmas) to his young children for years every Christmastime by doing the same with our children. I was a late bloomer to the Rings books, and looking back now I devoured them at the same time I was undergoing counseling and coming to grips with anxiety and depression — the darkest of those dark nights of the soul.

Come to think of it, Tolkien was there all along, stoking the flame of what was true, good and beautiful for one who felt tempted to doubt — “Don’t tempt me, Frodo!”

On walks, I listened to lectures by Peter Kreeft and Joseph Pearce about Tolkien and the Catholic allusions in his work. Tolkien was too smart a writer to make the Rings books simple allegory; one had to immerse into Middle-earth as a character, too, and experience the humanity that Mordor wanted to vanquish. He called this approach “sub-creation,” the idea that fantasy or fairy tales avoid direct reference to our known world, and yet speak deep truths about this very world we inhabit.

“Tolkien conveys God’s providential care and subtlety to guide us toward his perfect goodness without undermining our freedom,” Jesuit Father Robert Spitzer told me. “Though he does not reference God explicitly in The Lord of the Rings, you cannot help but think that divine providential goodness continuously surrounds the fellowship, guiding them through previously unimaginable challenges and dangers which become integral to the accomplishment of their mission,” he continued.

Consider, for instance, the character of Tom Bombadil, entirely left out of the movie adaptations because he was deemed non-essential for moving the plot forward, is nevertheless in my opinion one of the greatest characters in Tolkien’s whole legendarium. Tolkien does not outrightly explain what Bombadil actually is, but the One Ring has no effect on him: Unlike everyone else, Bombadil can see Frodo when the hobbit wears the ring. Is Bombadil a metaphor for the eternal, for God?

Tellingly, it’s Bombadil whom Gandalf is going to visit at the close of The Return of the King. “I am going to have a long talk with Bombadil: such a talk as I have not had in all my time,” Gandalf says. Frodo wants to see Bombadil, too, but is discouraged by Gandalf. “There may be a time later for you to go and see him.” The next time we see Gandalf he is accompanying Frodo and other ringbearers, save Sam Gamgee, to the Grey Havens. It’s interesting that those now leaving the Shire all had vivid dreams of great meaning much earlier when staying at Tom Bombadil’s house in The Fellowship of the Ring.

On not a few occasions did I ask, Why would God let all this happen? And again I was reminded of Tolkien, through Father Spitzer: “Respecting the confines of our freedom, divine providential goodness uses all of our challenges and weaknesses to draw forth courage, generosity, fortitude, wisdom, humility, and discipline that will become integral to the accomplishment of our mission, the formation of our character, and our entrance into the heavenly beyond.

Only looking back now did it occur to me the number of jokes and references my wife and I continually make that go back to the sub-creation of Tolkien’s mind — of Gimli and Sam, Smeagol and the ever-quotable Gandalf: “It’s quite cool.” That was looking back. Looking ahead… was it still too late?

Tolkien was fond of a term he coined, “eucatastrophe,” his definition for the part of the story that occurs just when all seemed lost, when catastrophe or doom loomed for our protagonists, our heroes. I first learned about it in a high school theology class, thank you, Jesuits. Just then, the tide would turn, hope would prevail, good would triumph over evil, love would find a way. Gandalf says it himself in The Two Towers: “Be merry! We meet again at the turn of the tide. The great storm is coming, but the tide has turned.”

Tolkien considered the Birth of Christ the moment of eucatastrophe in our imperfect, flawed and fallen world. A star pierced the darkness, a Savior was born in the unlikeliest of places. The Creator entered his sub-creation. The tide turned forevermore.

What is Tolkien’s contribution to his fellow man but celebration in that eucatastrophe, a happy ending that comes not without a journey fraught with peril, riddled with betrayal and sorrow, and in Frodo’s case, near-fatal wounds and an innocence he sacrificed so that others might live?

Faith, the sacraments, Scripture, prayer, family, memories — our sustenance on our journey, not unlike lembas, the special bread given to the hobbits by the elves. Here we were again in my memory: We were back in that moment when our voices cracked exchanging the marriage vows. We were there … and back again, the subtitle Tolkien chose for The Hobbit.

And as our 10th anniversary approaches, Archbishop Fulton Sheen’s simple advice to married couples now washes over us like the gentle laps of low tide, here paraphrasing from memory: “Just make it to 10 years. At 10 years you’ll have a house full of children and you’ll never want it to end.”