Marriage Muses

I’ve just gone through another season of hearing stories from different people, of marriages that have gone horribly awry. The irony, naturally, being that I’ve just taken a MASSIVE step towards marriage myself, after acquiring a BTO flat with Weimin yesterday. As I sit down and think, I find myself asking God what is He trying to say to me?

Coupled with the fact that I had my first conversation with Grace in more than a year not too long ago, I am left with certain things that I keep musing over.

I used to think about marrying Grace all the time. It seemed the most natural thing in the world. I would be singing along to the Beach Boys song “Wouldn’t It be Nice”, and meaning every single word. I thought that as soon as we grew up and were financially viable, we could get married and our lives would be complete. Yet when that part of my life ended, I always assumed that it was the death of a part of me, and my belief in a love that could be so unconditional and true.

But maybe that’s not true. In fact, it seems God is increasingly showing me that He’s still preserving that part of me, and has not allowed it to die. Instead, He wants me to learn to from my mistakes. I am bidden to not awaken love until it so desires. It was sheer immaturity that made me so presumptuous about my previous relationship. The death of that relationship revealed to me just how far away I was from being ready to enter into a marriage. Love in the absence of maturity results in all the broken marriages that I hear of.

And so the recent spate of encounters I had with broken marriages is like a reminder from God not to once more tread in my own footsteps, but to take a good look at myself and ask how I am doing, in terms of preparing myself to be married. Of many recently married couples that I have seen, probably the only 2 that I could say for sure is ready to step up and lead in a marriage, would be Art and Yibin.

So with all these different factors for me to use to contrast against, (my failed r/s, all the broken marriages around me, the cloud of witnesses before me like Art and Yibin, my own current state of readiness, and what God seems to be leading me towards), I think there’s plenty for me to think about. I need to not procrastinate for the sake of procrastination, but I also shouldn’t rush headlong into marriage just because everyone says it’s the “next thing to do”.

That way, when I know God is telling me that I am ready, and Weimin is ready, I will really be ready to take the next step.