Why You Don't Need A List of Things to Do Before You Get Married

Photo Credit Craig Thoburn Photography

 Back and forth it goes.

The internet battle between the Single Years Are the Best: Live Your Life campaign and the Young Marriage: Your Soulmate Is Just Around the River Bend pushers.

{Full disclosure: I married young. I was 21 years old and my husband was 19}.

But here's the thing: Your life doesn't end at the altar. It doesn't begin there, either.

While there does need to be a certain maturity before one makes the decision to pledge one's life to another human being {also, you should probably have mastered basic living skills like budgeting, cooking, and doing laundry....}, there are not external milestones or goals you have to hit before getting hitched.

Our lives ought to be awesome no matter our relationship status. As Christians, we are to honor Christ all the time.

It seems that while the our culture tends to eschew marriage altogether, Christians are plunging to the other extreme and idolize marriage as THE goal for young people.

Marriage doesn't complete you as a person - it can compliment you, but it does not complete you.

Christ completes you. Or He should. It's a life-long journey.

See, marriage is awesome - when it's the right thing for you.

What I'd like to see is young people doing is being awesome things regardless of what their relationship status is. 

It's not hard to do.

Promise.

I see so many single young woman lusting after "The Big Day" and planning ultimate dream weddings. Our culture tells us that it's the biggest day of your life. It's the day the girl gets to be a Princess. Emphasis is placed on The Day.

But the silence on the importance of choosing your mate or what happens after the honeymoon is deafening.

I propose that we stop acting like we either have to be awesome before marriage because it all stops when you walk down that aisle or that our lives don't start till we find That Person.

You want to find that person? Be yourself. Don't focus on finding that person - focus on being the best you you can be. Have fun. Laugh. Dare. Have adventures. Be awesome.

Then when you find that person, be Awesome Squared.

Here's the deal: As Christians, we are to die to ourselves every day. Now, being married means that you to die to yourself extra because you have a whole other person you are to honor and that is part of marriage.

And don't even get me started on the laying-low of motherhood. You die to yourself every time you change yet another shirt and stumble through the dark to feed hungry cries.

But again: being a mother doesn't mean you stop doing amazing things. Sure, the awesome things might change for a season.

But isn't all of life ebb and flow?

So I can't stay up till 3 a.m. every night - let alone run into the grocery store quickly.

But life's adventures are perhaps not found in some distant land or vista or degrees acquired but in the learning to find adventure and mystery and wonder right where you are.

Life is full of it if you just open your eyes.

And so I humbly challenge myself and everyone to stop comparing your life to others, stop thinking 'I have to really live before x happens' or 'Once y happens, then I can really live' or even 'better live now before this happens.'

No! Really live now.

Whoever you are.
Wherever you are.
Now. 

Now is the time to take hold of the life you have been given and make something of it.