lifeasmission

1 More Week & Then I’m Free

June 28, 2009

This is my last week as a single guy.  Come Sunday, I’m a married man and I couldn’t possibly be more excited about it.

Handicapped by a devastating view of what freedom is really all about, marriage is often portrayed as the end of freedom – think Seinfeld, Friends, Everybody Loves Raymond, etc.  Here’s 3 reasons why, in opposition to that sort of notion, I am so excited to get married that all have to do with a new freedom I am about to embrace.

1) I don’t have any regrets from my season of singleness so I am free to embrace the adventure of marriage. I embraced, celebrated, and enjoyed my singleness.  Happily, I had good friends and mentors who taught me that singleness is a gift and should be treated as such as long as God grants it.  Shame on our culture (especially any Christian culture) for making people feel inferior for being single for as long they are able to embrace it as a gift.  Spend your single years pining away for a companion and you are all but destined to struggle with being married.

2) I don’t have to play the dating game anymore anymore so I am free to pursue God in the context of a covenanted relationship. I can’t count the number of couples that have spoken of marriage as a context which brought them face to face with their own selfishness and shortcomings like never before.  With all the guessing, ambiguity and semi-commitment of dating, this just doesn’t happen.  Again, fortunate enough to have come across people and books that dispelled lies about the purpose and aim of marriage, I am anxious to embrace marriage as a crucible toward Christlikeness.

3) Amy is not “The One” or “Mrs. Right” (since these only exist in fairy tale land), so I am free to never ask ridiculous questions like, “Did I marry the right person?” Don’t you love how freeing that is?!  The ability and opportunity trade in a cheap and shallow freedom along the lines of, “Well if this isn’t working I can always just bite the bullet and admit that I made the wrong decision,” for the true freedom of moving forward in the context of vows made and kept, is priceless to me.

And though it doesn’t pertain exactly to freedom, it’s nonetheless true that a big part of my excitement has much to do with the incredible woman who said, “Yes.”  To partner in life and ministry with Amy from here on out is the single most exciting thing that has ever happened to me.

Posted in: Amy, love, marriage