In last week’s blog, I mentioned the grand parenting factor of marrying younger. Our culture has shifted and now tends to look down on younger married persons, but does chronological age (youthfulness) automatically mean immaturity? Maturity does not come with age, but rather life experiences that are successfully worked and walked through. Young married persons can face those life experiences together.
My wife and I were married in our very early 20’s. Here are ten reasons that we have come to celebrate that decision.
- We carried less baggage into the marriage from multiple partners, breakups and disastrous relationships.
- We grew up faster, taking on the many responsibilities of married life early.
- We were young and had tons of fun before children entered the picture.
- We didn’t have deeply established routines and independent lives so it was easier to develop our culture in becoming one.
- It was easier to make personal change and become what would honor and serve our spouse. In other words, compromise and sacrifice were an early part of becoming adults.
- We had few extra resources so we learned to budget early and make do.
- We went from a small apartment to missionary service (an even smaller apartment) to our first home. The progression and sacrifice were shared and the accomplishments were milestones along the way.
- We love our memories of “young love.” But since then, romance has grown and we know each other, having grown older together with over four shared decades…”old love.”
- We weren’t partying and being careless, but we were helping one another reach our life goals. We navigated graduate school together.
- We are with the one person who has stuck by our side through the most difficult and the most enjoyable years of life. We raised our children together and now fully enjoy our grandchildren.
No disappointment here when the scripture says, “May you rejoice in the wife of your youth…” (Proverbs 5:18)
It’s pretty rare to attend a wedding today where the bride and groom are under age 25. More often, it’s a couple who are approaching their mid 30’s. The reasons? There’s college and then there’s college debt. Then a career to help pay that debt and perhaps even graduate school – more debt. The pervasive attitude becomes waiting until all the stars align, i.e., school, jobs, housing, money, etc.
Grandparents can pass on or become too old to relate in healthy and fun ways with their grandchildren. And when that happens, something very, very important and essential is lost in our culture.
We started writing about, training counselors and actually mentoring couples in pre- and postmarital counseling in 1989. Our primary goal as stated in our book, Called Together, Asks the Difficult Questions that all Couples Must Answer Before and After They say “I Do,” was to better prepare couples before marriage and follow-up with them after marriage using this book as a resource in the hands of trained counselors. The ultimate goal of accomplishing this was to have an effect upon the divorce rate of our day. We longed for, worked toward and prayed to see it lowered.
I’ve noticed some things about women and men and their wonderful differences. The women in our lives need to hear from us as men. They need to hear about our lives, our ambitions, our emotions, our issues and they really long to hear our thoughts about them. There is something internal in most women that connects with their spouse’s words, expressions, eye contact, touch and truthfulness about themselves. Women want to hear from their men in order to connect with them. It’s an internal connection and it can be difficult for men who would, more or less, rather have external connections.
In Genesis chapter one we are told that God created both male and female and it is recorded that we, as men and women, are made in His image, in God’s likeness. Our Creator represents both male and female. He certainly knew what He was doing when He created us as image bearers. He did not miss a thing or forget to add something in order for us to connect. Genesis two records that we are bone of bone and flesh of flesh. We are connected and that connection is God-created. We were meant to work together and we were meant to become a single flesh.
I know of scarcely anything more difficult, more challenging and more humbling than expressing forgiveness. But at the same time, I know of scarcely anything more freeing than forgiveness. In the Holocaust documentary titled Shoah, a Warsaw ghetto victim states, “If you could lick my heart, it would poison you.” Nothing depicts a non-forgiving heart better than that picture. Author Gary Thomas once wrote, “We will be sinned against, and we will be hurt. When that happens, we will have a choice to make: We can give in to our hurt, resentment, and bitterness, or we can grow as a Christian and learn yet another important lesson on how to forgive.”
Forgiving is not something we naturally love to do. Even though we have been forgiven of so much and have fully come short of God’s ideal, we love to withhold forgiveness simply because (we might tell ourselves) the person has not suffered sufficiently for what they did to us. The truth is, One already suffered so we could be forgiven; we must now make the choice to do likewise (See Colossians 3:13). To do anything less is to take a position of critical judgment, freely giving ourselves over to the use of the evil one in heady, heartless self-righteousness.
There is this break up of a certain celebrity couple that has recently made the news. It seems that it was over his refusal to have sexual intimacy with her. This is newsworthy today because the media is pointing out his “dysfunction” and not hers. Interesting. Just what will waiting to have sex do for you as a single? Here are a few benefits:
nsider if you are single:
Steve Prokopchak 