I do believe in love after all

Ok…yes…I know I’ve just sworn off marriage, but there’s something inside me that can’t give up completely. There HAS to be a good reason for getting married, and I think I may have found one. I fully realize the reason I’ve come up with may not be THE reason for getting married, but it’s the only reason I would get married. Mmkay? Let me try to explain.

I’ve explored 4 different reasons for getting married:

1.) it’s practical,

2.) being “in love” with a person,

3.) being in love with the idea of marriage, or

4.) the need to be fulfilled somehow.

Here are my “debunkments” (if that’s not a word, it should be. Someone call Webster right away!): getting married for practical reasons would be very disappointing because you’d be tied to someone that you might not even like FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE and the only thing you’d have in return is a little more financial stability…MAYBE.

Getting married because you’re “in love” will be a major disappointment the morning you wake up next to your hairy, stinky, tub-o-lard and realize that he hasn’t looked deeply into your eyes or bought you roses or taken you on a romantic date for years (Likewise, he might wake up next to his hairy, stinky, tub-o-lard and not remember the last time they had sex or the last time she laughed heartily at one of his jokes or a time when she didn’t give him a honey-do list every Saturday that there happens to be a very important game on TV).

Finally, getting married in order to feel whole will also prove a sore tragedy. I truly believe that wholeness comes from God alone, and to try to find that in a person is putting way too much of a burden on that person as well as the relationship.

After sorting through all these reasons and finding them all to have their shortcomings, I think I’ve finally found a good reason for getting married. It actually started when I got to thinking about why I go to church. To be perfectly honest, I go because I love the social aspect. I love going to a place where I can be with my friends and others, many of whom I have a connection with simply because we are brothers and sisters through Christ. There is something about fellowship with people who share Christ in common that revives me.

So, I took this idea of fellowship and ran with it (as I tend to do with all my little epiphanies). This idea of fellowship started with church and ended with home. But first, I had to ask myself what the most important thing in my life is, because whomever I marry will have to support that. For me, that’s my relationship with God. Next, how does fellowship encourage that? At church I’m encourged and lead in worship and reflection on my Creator. With my friends, I’m challenged to step up my faith walk and encouraged not to give up when things get hard. But what happens when I get home and I’m faced with the things that really clench and squeeze the life out of my soul and cause me to be less than what God created me to be? These are the things that are easy to bury and cover up for the few hours we spend each week with friends and acquaintances; these are the “unspoken” prayer requests at Bible study; these are the things we’ve buried so deep we hardly know anymore where the root is. This is where the role of a spouse comes in. A spouse—the person who knows you the best, who sees you at your worst, who knows what your life looks like when you’re Spirit is in turmoil and when it’s at rest—is much, much harder to hide these things from.

I guess what I’m trying to get at is this: if I get married, I will marry the one person who will dig for the root of sin that entangles me and distances me from God. He will call me out when my life isn’t reflecting God’s love. He will challenge my faith and encourage me to seek God first. I believe THIS is what tru love is about. And if this is what love is about, then I do believe in love after all.